HP360 Lamination Problems

[colin smyth]

Hi All,
Just wondering if there are any other HP360 users out there that are having problems with printed vinyls de-laminating? I have been having this problem for about 12-14 months now and have been in constant battle with HP but their solution seems to be ignore it and it will go away!

I have tried Hexis, Avery, MacTac and Oracle vinyls with matching laminate and on ALL occasions, the laminate can be pulled cleanly away from any surface that has ink. I have also tried 3 different laminators, so I know that isn't the issue.

The key think is that we had the printer for 8 months before this issue came to light. We had instances where laminate would lift prom prints but put that down to not enough pressure during lamination, or laminator too cold. However, when we looked into it further, we noticed that it took VERY little effort to separate the laminate from the print.

We are based in the UK and find it very hard to get other sign makers to admit to issues, though have found quite a few, just wondering if anyone on the Signs101 community have had the same issue??

 

[papabud]

i believe i read somewhere that there is an issue with this. i would suggest making sure your print is being fully cured. it shouldn't feel "oily" to the touch.
might try raising your cure temp a little and see if that helps.

 

[dypinc]

I see that you found another thread about this but there was another thread that had a lot more posts that I can't find anymore.

Anyway this seems to come down to a ink curing issue. Not enough heat for long enough seems to be the conclusion of some. I haven't seen it except in rare cases where there was a lot of ink coverage but then it still took some effort to peal the over-laminate off.

 

[colin smyth]

Hi Papabud. Ink is definitely cured, we have a L25500 so I am pretty familiar with "greasy" uncured ink
Think there definitely is an issue and i'm pretty sure HP know about it. We actually had a director of a well know vinyl manufacturer in with us who told me that HP were aware of this issue and he had a letter confirming it, which he would send me a copy. When I phoned him a few days later asking for it, he denied all knowledge of the conversation

I have had an HP engineer check all the setting and heaters, he has even tweaked the amount of Optimiser going down but that didn't help.

I have a video I took showing how easy the laminate peels but when I try to upload it, the site rejects it (only 2.5mb also), I think you both would be interested to see it??

 

[colin smyth]

Meant to say, the video is of me peeling laminate from a sign hat was printed over 13months ago and was still in our workshop!!

 

[AKwrapguy]

Hi All,
Just wondering if there are any other HP360 users out there that are having problems with printed vinyls de-laminating? I have been having this problem for about 12-14 months now and have been in constant battle with HP but their solution seems to be ignore it and it will go away!

I have tried Hexis, Avery, MacTac and Oracle vinyls with matching laminate and on ALL occasions, the laminate can be pulled cleanly away from any surface that has ink. I have also tried 3 different laminators, so I know that isn't the issue.

The key think is that we had the printer for 8 months before this issue came to light. We had instances where laminate would lift prom prints but put that down to not enough pressure during lamination, or laminator too cold. However, when we looked into it further, we noticed that it took VERY little effort to separate the laminate from the print.

We are based in the UK and find it very hard to get other sign makers to admit to issues, though have found quite a few, just wondering if anyone on the Signs101 community have had the same issue??

The new gen 3 inks for the HP latex have a 'scratch resistance' feature to them. If they are not cured properly than the bond between the laminate and ink will fail. Ways to help with this depending on your setup, you might want to look at increasing your number of passes so that there is more dwell time in the heater, maybe look at reducing the ink density as well, and of course you can look at increasing your heat a little as well as long as it's not causing the material to buckle.

You can also try and using a little heat when laminating as well if you have a heated laminator.

 

[stew1tx]

I want to see this.

 

[CaliforniaVibe]

We print on a HP360, never had a problem with the laminate coming off, we have used oracal 290 and the 210 matte/gloss (all cold lams). Never experienced this issue...

I have seen issues with heavy cmyk color mixes that dont dry so well, so we set the heat up to 217 (102.7 Celsius) degrees (currently have the over-saturation set to 120%). The optimizer is usually the culprit in this situation, can be something else. If its wet to touch as it comes out from under the heater, its definitely that. When I run a sapphire blue it has 100 Cyan 75 Magenta 0 Yellow 10 K - anything under 217 (102.7 Celsius) degrees will not dry properly when its 120% saturation.

Hope that helps

EDIT: Just read the op's second post, my bad

 

[HulkSmash]

we have several 300 level latex machines, and have never had this issue. However it could be a bad profile with wrong heat settings among many other things.

 

[stew1tx]

I have only seen it on oversaturated black but the laminate stuck, well kind of, it silvered.but after a number of days it set in and went away. I ran A BUNCH on a job and my laminator was down and had a BIG shop laminate it on a big laminator so I know it was right. Ended up having the roll comp'd from my supplier because I believed I had a bad roll. May have been, who knows. The printer was under warranty so it would have been covered either way I think. With that, it was like a zone thing where maybe there was a cool spot right in the middle and was not throughout the entire print which was weird.

The oversaturation issue is probably a different problem than you are looking at. I don't know. But, one thing for sure, run some unlaminated material and try and stick something like cut vinyl to it, just like a latex printed wall. Difficult to stick. Might be the problem, I usually have to use heat to post heat and make sure my cut vinyl is adhered firmly to the unlaminated vinyl. Just something to consider, but with that said, I have never that I can remember, had laminate peel. Have seen it on a mutoh though, probably not thoroughly outgassed knowing the shop that printed it.

 

[AaronSSsignsKC]

We have been running 300 series latex machines for 3+ years now all 3M vinyls and pairing laminates no issues with de lam. Only seen it on heavy saturated prints like previous people have said we just crank the heat on those types of runs. The way you are describing how easy it peels is scary to me I have never seen that before even on really un gassed solvent prints. Idk man good luck

 

[eahicks]

So is it delaminating in places where there is no ink? Or are these all full color edge to edge prints?

 

[jfiscus]

Too much optimizer, there are other threads on here with the same issue. The newer model supposedly does it more than the 360 does.

 

[AF]

Run max heat, you need to nuke your latex prints.

 

[colin smyth]

Thanks to everyone for the replies to this.
Firstly, ink is definitely cured, I still have my 1st gen Latex printer so know how to spot uncured ink . I have also had HP technician in workshop while running prints and he has confirmed curing, then laminated and peeled off in front of him...........queue blank look and scratching head!!
I got in contact with another vehicle wrapper that uses 3M ij180 - a lot of it - and he said he had no problems, I asked him to check old prints he had lying around the workshop and on every one, he was able to peel the laminate cleanly away from printed surface.

So is it delaminating in places where there is no ink? Or are these all full color edge to edge prints?

No problem where there is no ink, laminate bods well but anywhere else, even in very light gradients (cream/yellow) lam Just peels off.

 

[colin smyth]

I want to see this.

Here is the Dropbox link for the video, can’t seem to upload file here

Dropbox - IMG_3658.m4v

 

[colin smyth]

Run max heat, you need to nuke your latex prints.

Heat set at 115 Celsius, any hotter and it would melt

 

[colin smyth]

Too much optimizer, there are other threads on here with the same issue. The newer model supposedly does it more than the 360 does.

Lot of people have told me that but I was under the impression that the optimiser goes down first, helping the ink to cure at a lower temperature, so surely it won’t affect the laminate, is that not the case? Perhaps I should try a print with optimiser set very low and see what happens? Profile had it set at 120 but HP tech reset it to 100 but still no luck, maybe need to knock it back to 60-80.

 

[colin smyth]

We have been running 300 series latex machines for 3+ years now all 3M vinyls and pairing laminates no issues with de lam. Only seen it on heavy saturated prints like previous people have said we just crank the heat on those types of runs. The way you are describing how easy it peels is scary to me I have never seen that before even on really un gassed solvent prints. Idk man good luck

Hi Aaron, believe me, it is scary, especially when I think of the 1000’s of meters of prints I have run since installing it. It is so bad I don’t use it now for any vehicle graphics, reverted back to the 1st gen L25500 as there are no issues there. Really surprised that no one else is having issues but gives me a bit of hope that it is fixable and not just inks tat can’t be laminated!!

 

[colin smyth]

I have only seen it on oversaturated black but the laminate stuck, well kind of, it silvered.but after a number of days it set in and went away. I ran A BUNCH on a job and my laminator was down and had a BIG shop laminate it on a big laminator so I know it was right. Ended up having the roll comp'd from my supplier because I believed I had a bad roll. May have been, who knows. The printer was under warranty so it would have been covered either way I think. With that, it was like a zone thing where maybe there was a cool spot right in the middle and was not throughout the entire print which was weird.

The oversaturation issue is probably a different problem than you are looking at. I don't know. But, one thing for sure, run some unlaminated material and try and stick something like cut vinyl to it, just like a latex printed wall. Difficult to stick. Might be the problem, I usually have to use heat to post heat and make sure my cut vinyl is adhered firmly to the unlaminated vinyl. Just something to consider, but with that said, I have never that I can remember, had laminate peel. Have seen it on a mutoh though, probably not thoroughly outgassed knowing the shop that printed it.

Thanks for this, will try a few non-laminate vinyls and see how that goes, might be able to narrow it down to a laminate issue.