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Alignment Issues on Stairwell

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PinkPrintingPixie

New Member
Good morning everyone.

My boss is prompting me to reach out for advice concerning some issues we are having with alignment on a 35' tall stairwell mural.

We are printing on IJ180cv3 with 8520 laminate on an HP700W Latex printer. Using the base 3M 40C profile with 194 degrees temp. Vinyl is attached to the roll and take up calibrated before printing.

I am flipping panels already and giving a quarter inch overlap, but they are still claiming it must be a print issue and that the panels should match up perfectly.

The panels in question range from 149" to 285" long.

Could the printer be lengthening or stretching my panels? Is this something anyone here has dealt with before? Is it possible this is happening during install or a mix of both?

Thanks in advance- example seen below. And yes... we discussed simply using cut vinyl shapes and or paint mural for the splotches but they insist on a fully printed vinyl wall mural. :|

Capture.JPG



Lewis Mural.jpg
 
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signheremd

New Member
A couple of points to add: we prefer to use .64" overlap - I think .25" is a bit too small; the material can and does stretch when applied, so you must take care to apply in the same way for each panel. with a bit more overlap, and a shape like that, you might be able to cut away some of the white and hand move the printed shape to line up the overlap better
 
JBurton

JBurton

Signtologist
Are they your installers, or an outside team? Latex is really bad about not matching panel lengths, but it's not impossible for an experienced installer to work with. What may be happening, aside from the already inconsistent panel length, is if they are starting at the top, and leaving the 250 or so inches hanging from just the vinyl, they are stretching it constantly as they work down. The panels need to be secured throughout their length to prevent the weight of the material itself from stretching, especially as one panel is longer than the last, which is longer than the last. A 1% stretch on each panel is going to generate 1.8" on the first side, and 2.6" on the last. Working from the longest to the shortest would help alleviate this, as they'd be able to stretch the shorter panels to match the longer panels as they go, as opposed to shrinking the longer panels to match the shorter.
signheremd said:
so you must take care to apply in the same way for each panel.
Click to expand...
Also this. But since each panel is of a different length, they almost can't. Starting from a fixed height above the stairs would help, but not as much as sticking the longest panels first.
 
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ikarasu

Active Member
Did you lay out the panels before hand and ensure they line up before installing?..

We'll always drop the panels on the warehouse floor or a table if its big enough, get the panels aligned in on the table... then throw a piece of green tape down every 2 FT, splice the tape between the panels... And then you have a nice bright green piece that makes alignment super easy.

That way you know if the panels align before installing... and you have registration marks, If you're stretching too much and your tape is going out...you have registration marks in order to try to get it back on track, VS having 10 FT of white space.
 
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PinkPrintingPixie

New Member
ikarasu said:
Did you lay out the panels before hand and ensure they line up before installing?..

We'll always drop the panels on the warehouse floor or a table if its big enough, get the panels aligned in on the table... then throw a piece of green tape down every 2 FT, splice the tape between the panels... And then you have a nice bright green piece that makes alignment super easy.

That way you know if the panels align before installing... and you have registration marks, If you're stretching too much and your tape is going out...you have registration marks in order to try to get it back on track, VS having 10 FT of white space.
Click to expand...
We don't have a great area to line up a pair of 47" x 285" panels, but the registration tape is an excellent idea! Admittedly I usually just send the panels to the site without laying them out due to space and time. I expect a small amount of variance, but they want a perfect seam. We may just have to lay out a couple panels best we can on the floor in the front room if it's big enough.

I sincerely hope it's not dramatically my printer, I'm exhausted just from the idea of having to troubleshoot something as variable and intangible as this.
 
balstestrat

balstestrat

Problem Solver
PinkPrintingPixie said:
We don't have a great area to line up a pair of 47" x 285" panels, but the registration tape is an excellent idea! Admittedly I usually just send the panels to the site without laying them out due to space and time. I expect a small amount of variance, but they want a perfect seam. We may just have to lay out a couple panels best we can on the floor in the front room if it's big enough.

I sincerely hope it's not dramatically my printer, I'm exhausted just from the idea of having to troubleshoot something as variable and intangible as this.
Click to expand...
You printing with Tiling optimization enabled?
 
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PinkPrintingPixie

New Member
balstestrat said:
You printing with Tiling optimization enabled?
Click to expand...
It doesn't seem so (Under settings>substrate source right?)- should I have that on continuously or only on murals? I'm wondering if this murals being printed on 3 separate rolls has anything to do with it either. It's too massive to print on one roll. Hell, the last 3 panels are a roll all their own.
 
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ikarasu

Active Member
PinkPrintingPixie said:
We don't have a great area to line up a pair of 47" x 285" panels, but the registration tape is an excellent idea! Admittedly I usually just send the panels to the site without laying them out due to space and time. I expect a small amount of variance, but they want a perfect seam. We may just have to lay out a couple panels best we can on the floor in the front room if it's big enough.

I sincerely hope it's not dramatically my printer, I'm exhausted just from the idea of having to troubleshoot something as variable and intangible as this.
Click to expand...

Do you tape it up to the take up reel before printing? I know its a waste... But we always had panel issues, then after a few steps we can get it "ok". Not as good as our Epson though.

Tape it up to the take up reel before printing - this way the tension is the same through the whole thing.

Turn on preheat for a few minutes before printing.... That way everything gets equivalent heat.

Rotate each panel

There's some good videos from HP about it. The latex CAN be pretty consistent... It just takes effort. It used to be pretty bad, but there's been a ton of firmware updates that have got it pretty close. We used to refuse to use our latex for wall pannels, but we're finding its less of an issue now.



 
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PinkPrintingPixie

New Member
ikarasu said:
Do you tape it up to the take up reel before printing? I know its a waste... But we always had panel issues, then after a few steps we can get it "ok". Not as good as our Epson though.

Tape it up to the take up reel before printing - this way the tension is the same through the whole thing.

Turn on preheat for a few minutes before printing.... That way everything gets equivalent heat.

Rotate each panel

There's some good videos from HP about it. The latex CAN be pretty consistent... It just takes effort. It used to be pretty bad, but there's been a ton of firmware updates that have got it pretty close. We used to refuse to use our latex for wall pannels, but we're finding its less of an issue now.



Click to expand...
Thanks for the videos! I'll give them a watch. I am taping up the material and running tension calibration before printing, and rotating panels, but I'll start pre-heating before I send the first print, or print a smaller job up front if possible. We only have one printer in shop so as you can imagine I'm getting hell about it. Thanks for all the help! I think the shop used to have an eco-sol but the boss didn't like how out gassing slowed us down. That was before my time though.
 
balstestrat

balstestrat

Problem Solver
PinkPrintingPixie said:
It doesn't seem so (Under settings>substrate source right?)- should I have that on continuously or only on murals? I'm wondering if this murals being printed on 3 separate rolls has anything to do with it either. It's too massive to print on one roll. Hell, the last 3 panels are a roll all their own.
Click to expand...
You don't have to use it for anything else than tiles.
 
stickerhed

stickerhed

New Member
I have the same printer, what I've found is that the panels line up much better if you print 1 panel at a time, let it run through the curing process, then send over another panel. Our panels never lined up until I did this.
 
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PinkPrintingPixie

New Member
stickerhed said:
I have the same printer, what I've found is that the panels line up much better if you print 1 panel at a time, let it run through the curing process, then send over another panel. Our panels never lined up until I did this.
Click to expand...
That's actually really good insight- thank you! Definitely would slow down the process, but if that's something I need to try then I'll do it. I wonder why that's the case. Do you run with that tiling optimization the above poster mentioned on?
 
stickerhed

stickerhed

New Member
PinkPrintingPixie said:
That's actually really good insight- thank you! Definitely would slow down the process, but if that's something I need to try then I'll do it. I wonder why that's the case. Do you run with that tiling optimization the above poster mentioned on?
Click to expand...
I actually started doing this before they added that in a firmware update. I've never tried it. I also have an HP L365 and it worked with that printer as well. I will tell you that I bought an Epson S80600L and the panels line up perfectly without any hassle.
 
Texas_Signmaker

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
Once you get those printing issues taken care of... it's a MUST to line them up in the shop and register them with masking tape. Don't leave it up to the installers to try and figure out how to register it onsite. I'd do 3/4" or 1" overlap.. 1/4" is too short. They did a bad job installing.. you can manually adjust the panels on the wall but to create a huge air pocket and wrinkle like that isn't acceptable. I'd keep working it till it was better.
 
JBurton

JBurton

Signtologist
stickerhed said:
I have the same printer, what I've found is that the panels line up much better if you print 1 panel at a time, let it run through the curing process, then send over another panel. Our panels never lined up until I did this.
Click to expand...
I'm not saying your wrong, but this is baffling why it would work. Like, I could see the solution to be adding 2' of white space on the leading edge, but you'd think that while it finishes curing, it's preheating the leading edge of the next print, and that would cause different amounts of shrink and stretch, exacerbating any length issues. It's not like the printer is losing count of the length as time goes on.
 
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