We purchased an HP Scitex FB700 earlier this year with the white ink upgrade. The white ink is something we were (and still are) very excited about, and we've used it most of the time without any issues. I'm able to print gorgeous displays on clear acrylic and add solid white graphics to colored media. However, until last week, we had not received a job where we considered/required printing colored graphics (that is, white underflood with another color printed on top of the white) on colored media.
Last week, the culprit was some signs we had screen printed before. Our customer buys bulk orders of "blank" signs with their logo and brand design, and then we add phone numbers for different contacts as they need them. Traditionally, this has been done by plotting yellow vinyl or (if it's a large order for the same phone number) screen printing white ink and then yellow ink for the same look (the background in a dark blue and the blue bleeds through the yellow ink; this problem still exists with plotting yellow vinyl, it's just not as bad).
When we started printing them, we had the same problem we encounter with screen printing - even with the white ink underflood. We never found a "real" solution - what we ended up doing is printing all of the signs twice. We printed solid white on all of the signs, then loaded them all again and printed yellow with a white underflood on all of the signs.
Now, I have a bigger job where that's not a good option. I have a large order of interior displays printed on 1/4" (6mm) PVC. The customer wants the edges of the PVC to be black, so we though we'd just print on black PVC and not bother painting the edges on 40+ pieces of white PVC.
Even at the highest quality (Max DPI - which we had never used for anything prior to this test), the images come out dull compared to both the displays my customer already has and compared to my own print on white material. It just seems that the white underflood isn't opaque enough to give us a rich color on top. I've included a photograph below - the top image is printed on black PVC, the bottom image is printed on white.
We're running the newest version of Onyx. Is there just a setting I'm missing, or does white just not work like we expected? My only other thought is that I could print white across the entire 4' x 8' sheet of material, and then print the graphics with a white underflood. However that's not time or cost efficient.
Last week, the culprit was some signs we had screen printed before. Our customer buys bulk orders of "blank" signs with their logo and brand design, and then we add phone numbers for different contacts as they need them. Traditionally, this has been done by plotting yellow vinyl or (if it's a large order for the same phone number) screen printing white ink and then yellow ink for the same look (the background in a dark blue and the blue bleeds through the yellow ink; this problem still exists with plotting yellow vinyl, it's just not as bad).
When we started printing them, we had the same problem we encounter with screen printing - even with the white ink underflood. We never found a "real" solution - what we ended up doing is printing all of the signs twice. We printed solid white on all of the signs, then loaded them all again and printed yellow with a white underflood on all of the signs.
Now, I have a bigger job where that's not a good option. I have a large order of interior displays printed on 1/4" (6mm) PVC. The customer wants the edges of the PVC to be black, so we though we'd just print on black PVC and not bother painting the edges on 40+ pieces of white PVC.
Even at the highest quality (Max DPI - which we had never used for anything prior to this test), the images come out dull compared to both the displays my customer already has and compared to my own print on white material. It just seems that the white underflood isn't opaque enough to give us a rich color on top. I've included a photograph below - the top image is printed on black PVC, the bottom image is printed on white.
We're running the newest version of Onyx. Is there just a setting I'm missing, or does white just not work like we expected? My only other thought is that I could print white across the entire 4' x 8' sheet of material, and then print the graphics with a white underflood. However that's not time or cost efficient.
