FB500/700 users...Need help

[parrott]

We are running some .015 clear rigid vinyl sheets (25"x52") second surface with a white flood and are getting head strikes due to the heat from the lamps. We are using the clear sheet profile with the vacuum on high and the lamps on low. Anybody have any suggestions on how to prevent this? We also just got done running a large job on .020 styrene and were running into similar situations. We resolved this issue by aligning the image to the back of the sheet which allowed for 5" of extra material (leading edge) on the front.

Do any of you have any tips/tricks for running thin material? Especially materials that react to the heat from the lamps.

Thanks in advance!

 

[particleman]

If I remember correctly you can do unidirectional which only uses one lamp at a time (I could be wrong). I know with thin styrene we often had to tape the leading edge of the material down and peel it off before it ran onto the table. This was usually the trouble spot. In the end you'll have to balance the heat/head height to hopefully be able to make it work.

 

[cwb143]

We are running some .015 clear rigid vinyl sheets (25"x52") second surface with a white flood and are getting head strikes due to the heat from the lamps. We are using the clear sheet profile with the vacuum on high and the lamps on low. Anybody have any suggestions on how to prevent this? We also just got done running a large job on .020 styrene and were running into similar situations. We resolved this issue by aligning the image to the back of the sheet which allowed for 5" of extra material (leading edge) on the front.

Do any of you have any tips/tricks for running thin material? Especially materials that react to the heat from the lamps.

Thanks in advance!

Make sure there is no ink clogging up the perforations on the belt. Adjust the head height up .125 is max. Other than that There is not much you can do unless you use that warped media mode which will burn the first 12" of material. If you can allow for that it works. But this printer just doesn't do all that great on thin stuff being a belt drive or hybrid printer. The vacuum can only do so much unlike a true flatbed. Lamp Temp doesn't seem to matter.

 

[jasonx]

Get a sheet of foam pvc etc and tape your sheet to this and feed through the printer. Stops all the edges curling up. More work but I've done it before.

 

[parrott]

We have utilized the print delay by 1 second on each pass to offset the heat from the lamps. Basically it pauses the carriage for 1 second after each pass to allow time for the material to cool. It is essentially doing the same thing unidirectional printing is doing, but less head travel. It definitely slows down the printing process, but so far it seems to be working. I will update later with final results.