Help JV33 Fabric Ink sinking in

[Centro Graphics]

Hey Guys

Been printing with our JV33 for the last five years, all good really, until today. trying fabric for the first time and the ink is soaking into the material which leaves our black artwork outputting grey. Seems the ink is soaking in.

Tried various profiles but no joy. Any pointers greatly appreciated.

Steve

 

[Vinylman]

Hey Guys

Been printing with our JV33 for the last five years, all good really, until today. trying fabric for the first time and the ink is soaking into the material which leaves our black artwork outputting grey. Seems the ink is soaking in.

Tried various profiles but no joy. Any pointers greatly appreciated.

Steve

Steve, I think this is your problem.
You need to verify with the material supplier that this fabric IS compatible with your ink and printer. They SHOULD have necessary info and profiles. If you are using the inks that you have used in the past and are trying a new material it may not be compatible with the material. Many fabrics today take very specific inks.

 

[P Wagner]

Hey Guys

Been printing with our JV33 for the last five years, all good really, until today. trying fabric for the first time and the ink is soaking into the material which leaves our black artwork outputting grey. Seems the ink is soaking in.

Tried various profiles but no joy. Any pointers greatly appreciated.

Steve

I am assuming that you are running one of the many versions of solvent or eco-solvent ink. In order to print on fabric with any solvent ink, you need to purchase the right fabric. In this case, that means a fabric that has been coated to react with solvent ink and hold the drop shape, and keep it from soaking into the fabric. It is a chemical problem, and not something that a profile can resolve.

There are many companies that make solvent-coated fabrics, including 3-P, Fisher, Aurora, Neschen, and many more.

 

[Centro Graphics]

Thanks for the help fellas.

The fabric was supplied by a reputable vendor and tested on their own JV33, even with rasterlink. We just cant get this right, been a head banger all afternoon. They even emailed me a photo of their ouput today and theirs seemed fine. Im stumped.

 

[SightLine]

Many fabrics have a tendency to look washed out which is most obvious on blacks. Most fabric profiles are really dumping a LOT of ink to keep the saturations up. Even on good coated solvent fabrics.... We have run a lot over the years, mostly Fisher Textiles. Some hold the ink up top better than others but there has to be a balance in the coating to make the material receptive to the ink. Too much coating and you can print with near any profile but with the coating too heavy it might as well be banner stock. Too little coating and too much of the ink gets wicked too deep into the fibers making it look washed out.

Try a test, print a small image but try doubling the ink (2 ink layers), make sure to crank post heat to 50 if you do not already have it there. Problem with that is it will likely be too much ink causing some things to just look way too dark and the ink will take a while to dry. It's all in the profiles unless of course your printhead has a lot of nozzles out or something.

 

[jfiscus]

If it is looking gray, and the rest of the colors look good; is your black only outputting the "K", or is it set up as a rich black? If it was spraying a mix of colors along with black, it shouldn't ever look black.
Check your profile for black generation of the CMYK levels at the area in question.

 

[P Wagner]

Thanks for the help fellas.

The fabric was supplied by a reputable vendor and tested on their own JV33, even with rasterlink. We just cant get this right, been a head banger all afternoon. They even emailed me a photo of their ouput today and theirs seemed fine. Im stumped.

Who manufactures the media, and what it it's model number/ name?

 

[Letterbox Mike]

We've found fabrics, even those meant for use in solvent/ecosolvent machines, to be extremely finicky and difficult to print. We have the best results with the heaters fairly high and by printing in unidirectional at a lower resolution and high pass count, and sometimes by double-striking the image. But it's still iffy. Fabric and solvent inks just don't mix all that well unfortunately. We finally gave up on printing fabric on our JV33 and our GS6000 (we did move it to our UV printer and the results are phenomenal).

 

[Centro Graphics]

Guys

Thanks so much for the help. To answer some questions

All heads are fine, there are no problems (thankfully) with the output, been running vinyl before this job.
We are running full solvent. The supplier is UK based, as are we.

I have now upped the heat to max, changed the output with 16 pass, lowish res and upped the contrast in the rip. Its better but not perfect. I had to make a decision to run with it as this is for a big game launch (cant say which one, but its internationally known), we have over 50 yards to print and supposed to be ready for Saturday lunch, thats gonna be Sunday, the event is Monday.

Thanks again fellas, and I will be on the phone on Monday to look at what they have sold me.