Dry time before cutting?

[Colin]

While we understand that solvent ink affects the adhesive on regular white print vinyl, and therefore requires 24-48 hours dry time before laminating, I'm wondering what dry time we need to give if we're just printing on clear, gloss laminate?

It's solid black ink only, and I'm contour-cutting these very small labels over a bleed of that black ink.

Given that the ink is likely not penetrating the gloss lam in the same way that it would with regular print media, I'm wondering if the dry time can be shorter before contour cutting. (I'm not laminating these, just cutting).

 

[Joe House]

This will be very media dependant as well as artwork dependant as well as profile dependant, but you'll probably want to add some dry time to this job maybe 1 - 3 minutes The solvents in the ink act directly on the vinyl itself. If you're cutting into black ink (usually the heaviest ink load) the vinyl will soften and will want to curl. If you give the solvents time to evaporate before cutting, then you're basically cutting vinyl without the actions of solvent interfering with the project. This is more of a concern with print/cut machines where the cutting can take place immediately. If you're taking the prints off your printer and cutting them on a separate plotter, you probably* won't have to worry about it.

Good Luck

 

[Colin]

Thanks Joe. What I've been doing so far is printing the registration marks for "Print & Cut" (Roland VW), letting it dry for a day or two, then cutting (again, no Lam on this particular job).
So I'm just wondering if that amount of dry time is required, or if I could get away with much less dry time with no negative consequences.

 

[Joe House]

As I said, there are a lot of variables. I'd do some quick tests. Try a line of stickers with no dry time - just print/cut at the same time. Let is sit for a few hours or overnight and see how it looks. The try it with 1 min, 3 min and 5 min dry time P and C - you'll have to set this up in the cut options menu on the printer (this depends on the printer model you're using). Evaluate them and pick the acceptable sample with the lowest dry time and run them that way.
I would think that with 1 or 3 minutes of dry time between the print and cut, the job would be quicker than having to reload the sheets. 5 minutes of dry time might be slower, but still less involved as far as physical interaction goes.

 

[Gino]

I imagine you're running at a high/fine output, so more ink would be going down, but I too, think 2 days is overkill. I would think maybe an hour would be more than enough. Like he said, try it at a few intervals and see what the results bring ya.

 

[Goatshaver]

Yeah I've been kind of deal with the same issues. Job dependent and how much ink is laid down. If I'm not laminating it I just let it dry for a few minutes (3-5min) and haven't had any problems. With sheets I laminate I wait about a day for them gas out. I'd say 2 days is overkill.

 

[White Haus]

We do runs of a certain label for a customer that's maybe 2.5" x 5", full bleed, on calendered film that doesn't get laminated. We run a few hundred at a time and set the dry time to 5-10 mins or so before it comes back to cut. We'll turn the heat off while it's drying, and most of the time it cuts/weeds fine without any curling. This obviously isn't a super efficient use of the printer for larger quantities but your method of printing crop marks and letting it sit is probably your best bet. If you want to shorten the time you could throw a fan on it.

 

[AMGearhart]

Same here. Usually I give it an hour. Maybe more for heavy inks. Maybe less for lighter ones. Also, by insisting on an hour "drying time", it keeps the project managers from expecting me to do everything in 5 minutes.

 

[Colin]

Same here. Usually I give it an hour. Maybe more for heavy inks. Maybe less for lighter ones.

Yes, as I always use RGB black for my black fills (it provides for a much nicer, deeper, richer black than CMYK), and I'm printing in high-quality mode for these particular decals due to the very small print, there is a fair bit of ink put down, so I figure at least an hour dry time would be required. So in order to not tie up the printer for all that time, printing registration marks and cutting later still seems to be the way to go.