heat?

[gabagoo]

hey guys, I was just wondering about some stuff that maybe I have not understood. Is it generally understood that your pre heat should be about 5 degrees celcius hooter than your print heat on banners and vinyl? Thats pretty much what I was taught from day one and have adhered to it. I will drop the heat or increase it from material to material but I always keep that 5 degree difference. The only material where that is reversed I found was with printing on this particular brand of photo paper. MY biggest concern is with banners. Regardless of brand we seem to have to really treat them carefully as one false move and scuffing or rubbing will ruin them. I generally print everything with the heads in the high posiition unless I need to print a large area of spot colour for retratables... but then we always have to liquid laminate those as printing in the low position for whatever reason will result in scuffing.

 

[thewood]

At what temps are you printing your scrim banner material?

 

[gabagoo]

I try o run 42 pre 37 print, I am not sure if I go any hotter if the material will buckle....for the most part it seems fine just getting the ink to be less fragile afterwards is my issue and always has been.

 

[thewood]

Are you running OEM inks? I run quite a bit hotter on banner (45/50) and use Triangle inks which I've found to be quite durable and scratch-resistant. You may want to raise your temps a bit. I can max out the heat (60) on scrim banner without buckling.

 

[gabagoo]

yea I'm on oem, so are you saying that lack of heat causes the easy scuffing of material? I suppose my profile will havea lot to do with it also, but I am running a profile that I know others with my machine use with no probs. I guess every printer is unique

 

[thewood]

I think that raising the heat may allow the inks to "bite" into the material a bit more and possibly prevent lessen scuffing.