Clear Vinyl Printing

[NcDecal]

Well I am up and running to many of you and my printer is printing GREAT...I bought some clear vinyl to do decals BUT as many of you all know it does not print sold color on clear I have read about printers doing a primer before printing on clear vinyl can this printer do that? I have flexi print as a program

Not sure if that matters

Thanks
Bret

 

[Bradster941]

can this printer do that?

and what printer would that be?

 

[CheapVehicleWrap]

Your printer prints with translucent inks and has no white. In other words, you wasted your money on clear vinyl as your printer can not print on it. Ask first next time.

 

[signage]

In order to print a primer/underbase the printer has to have white ink. Most likely your Mutoh doesn't have white ink!

 

[Malkin]

You can print a reverse image and the overlaminate with a white vinyl before cutting, and this will net you a decal for inside apply on glass, but you can't do a spot print of white, like text or shapes only.

 

[NcDecal]

Thanks folks this all has been a learning curve and I can sell the clear to a guy down the road anyway....Also I do hear about spot printing. That is using just the colors that the image has, correct? not sure if my software is setup correctly?! lol anyway for the most part do printers just print using all the colors or is the program setup to print just black or just red if image calls for it? I have attached a few images of my program to see if I have things setup right

Thanks for all your help folks]

 

[MikePro]

apply cut white vinyl to printed elements to give opaque color, leaving the rest of your print transluscant.

 

[J Hill Designs]

printer prints in CMYK not spot

 

[jwright350]

You are going to need to print on white and then contour cut out your design to get the desired effect. Mutoh does not make a printer that uses white ink.

Your settings in flexi appear to be correct, although it will ultimately depened on the color profile/preset that you are using. FYI, most of the ones you find on the web and download don't work all that great.

Spot color printing / color matching is not much fun. All your spot colors will convert into their closest 4 color process (CMYK) equivalent. This will mean that spot reds and blues will be tough to get to output.

You need to turn off the spot color mapping unless you are specifically trying to map one of the spot colors in your drawing to a particular ink color. For example if you draw something with a spot black in your drawing, then turn on spot color mapping, and then select the black to map to the black ink... you'll get a pure black print. This can save you lots of ink when printing black text for example.

 

[mark galoob]

actually you can print on clear...i have printed on clear lam on several occasions, then overlaminated and contour cut or whatever i need to do...you can set the printer to print the same image up to 9 times in a row to get it darker...this is limited and for certain apps it works...like on a light box sign that you want light to shine through or on translucent decals or such... you just need to have the right app...

mark galoob

 

[jwright350]

Just my 2 cents.

I've never see a mutoh rip that allows for multiple strike printing. Now if you set it to high quality you may get a 16 pass print... but you need to have a color profile setup for that. Its not like you can just play around with the print modes and expect consistent output.

Regardless of what people may say around here print modes are directly tied to the color profile. So if a profile says its a 720X720 CMYKLcLm High Bi Directional High Quality....then just picking 1440X1440 as your resolution will not get you correct output.

Pretty much, 4 color process ink jets don't print very good on clear because their inks are transparent. You'll always need a white underbase. To print a back light sign and have proper ink density when lit, here is a trade secret. Print the front of the sign on translucent white, then reverse print on clear and mount that on the back face of the sign. This gives you a double density print. (and yeah, its just as much a pain as it sounds but at least your customer isn't having your replace a sign that looks faded when lit)

 

[Ken1f]

With my ValuJet I can print multiple passes. It's not in the rip, it's in the printer setup. You can set the number of passes and the dry time between each.

 

[jwright350]

yeah, but thats not double strike. it lays down a smaller percentage each pass slightly offset from the previous pass to build up resolution this is how you can make a print head with 180 nozzles print 1440 dpi (1440 / 180 = 8 pass)

 

[Prairieboy]

You can print a reverse image and the overlaminate with a white vinyl before cutting, and this will net you a decal for inside apply on glass, but you can't do a spot print of white, like text or shapes only.

I have done this method several time and it works quite well, I also use the multi pass settings to increase the color intesity. With a little practice you can can get great results

 

[jwright350]

I have done this method several time and it works quite well, I also use the multi pass settings to increase the color intesity. With a little practice you can can get great results

+1 works every time on flood white situations. also works on static cling!

 

[onestringer]

So how do you go about setting up the printer for this process?