Help printing Wall Covering On HP Latex Printers!

[F1225hgB42w]

Hello All -

We have an HP L360 we are using to print on Korographics Abaco beach. We've printed two rolls of Abaco Beach and have followed the process outlined on the Korographics website (http://www.korographics.com/printing.php) to fight what Korographics refers to as "shading", meaning when we print the mural panels we alter the direction from top to bottom and bottom to top each panel. Even doing this our last mural had very noticeable shading on the panels (just for reference the mural was 12' x 50' and we printed panels 52" wide with a 2" overlap and then had our installer install with a butt joint seam), but it was only two seams out of the 10 seams we had in the mural, making me wonder WHY this is happening. We have printed tons of vinyl graphics that are later used in vehicle wraps that overlap and NEVER seen any 'shading', and that includes running the vinyl panels all the same direction. Basically this is the only material I see this problem on, so it makes me feel like it's a material issue, is that correct?

Is there anything I can do (besides altering the print direction of each panel - because we already to that) to fight this shading issue? Or is there another material that won't have this issue? I'm considering:

1) HP pvc free wallpaper
2) Dreamscapes Suede or Dreamscapes Mystical
3) Ultraflexx Wallscapes Suede

Does anyone have experience on these materials without shading?

Thanks!

DSGI

 

[AF]

I highly doubt it is the material. The 360 prints before the Mach e has reached a uniform temperature and this known issue has been addressed by HP. HP recommends letting the machine warm up for 20 minutes before printing color- critical items to avoid thermal shading as you describe.

 

[dypinc]

What about ink starvation?

I have noticed that when you let the ink level get below 20mil. It was on nothing that critical but it sure seemed like that was going on.

Doyle

 

[F1225hgB42w]

I highly doubt it is the material. The 360 prints before the Mach e has reached a uniform temperature and this known issue has been addressed by HP. HP recommends letting the machine warm up for 20 minutes before printing color- critical items to avoid thermal shading as you describe.

Hi AF -

Thank you for your post. While this is news to me it's not surprising that there can be some heater shading!

For me though I don't believe that is the issue and here is why:

1) the shading doesn't show up until my third and fourth panels, then goes away for two panels then, then shows back up again.
2) We print window graphics on the HP all the time and never stagger panels or see any color shading issues on window perf, 3M Vinyl or even our cheap cheap scrim banner vinyl.
3) When I read about wall coverings, it seems that Abaco Beach has a 27" wide embosser and they emboss half the roll in one pass then rewind the roll and do a second pass for embossing ( it looks like most major wall covering companies do this as well just to be fair), which can create different density levels on the media.


I'm working with the vendor who sold me the printer and I will report back on my findings.

I hope this helps someone else out there that comes across my posts and is having similar problems!

 

[F1225hgB42w]

What about ink starvation?

I have noticed that when you let the ink level get below 20mil. It was on nothing that critical but it sure seemed like that was going on.

Doyle

That may be a problem we run into in the future, but we had all our inks plus the optimizer above 650ml full when printing the mural.

Thanks for your post though, so we will be aware of that potential problem in the future.

DSGI