Issues with wrinkles in the film while printing

[Dennis422]

Printed a wall material (Fathead style) in my L25500 yesterday and had quite a few issues with it.
In the middle of the print I would get wrinkles at the edges of the film. It even damaged one of my printheads on Friday evening. Printhead got caught up at the wrinkle and that ripped the bottom plastic (that has wiring running through it) at the bottom of the printhead.
I know that there are issues with the heating of the film at the first 2-3 feet of the print, I usually put colored lines at the beginning to eliminate that before the real printing starts. But, I was getting these wrinkles even after 6-7 feet of printing.
I started with a regular setting of 55-110 C and 30% airflow. Later I lowered down to 50-110 C and increased the airflow to 45%.

Anyone has any idea why is this happening?

Thanks

 

[Dennis422]

More pics

 

[CES020]

What's your curing temperature? 110C? If so, my guess is that's too high. On our machine 110C will blister materials. It blisters the vinyl and the backer. We have to come down to 103-104C to stop the blistering. I don't know if that's your issue or not, but you might try running it with the temperature cut back a little and see if that helps.

 

[dypinc]

How many passes?

Probably need to go to more passes less heat.

AT 20 or 24 passes if you can't get the heat low enough to cure properly and still have these wrinkles then the media is simple incompatible with your printer.

 

[Dennis422]

It is set to 10 pass.
Pre-heat is set to 50C, the cure is set to 110C. These wrinkles are showing up before it is printed, I'm guessing caused by a 50C pre-heat temps.

 

[dypinc]

More likely the curing temp. Back it down to 90C and then bring up 5C at a time to test, but you may have to go to more passes. 10 Pass is a little low for vinyl anyway.

 

[BIG EASY DOES IT]

Printed a wall material (Fathead style) in my L25500 yesterday and had quite a few issues with it.
In the middle of the print I would get wrinkles at the edges of the film. It even damaged one of my printheads on Friday evening. Printhead got caught up at the wrinkle and that ripped the bottom plastic (that has wiring running through it) at the bottom of the printhead.
I know that there are issues with the heating of the film at the first 2-3 feet of the print, I usually put colored lines at the beginning to eliminate that before the real printing starts. But, I was getting these wrinkles even after 6-7 feet of printing.
I started with a regular setting of 55-110 C and 30% airflow. Later I lowered down to 50-110 C and increased the airflow to 45%.

Anyone has any idea why is this happening?

Thanks

Two things could cause this.

Heat but you lowered. So you should be good.

and

Too much tension.

 

[the graphics co]

could just be a bad/old roll of material that is easily lifting off of the release liner

 

[P Wagner]

Materials without paper backers, such as PVC banner vinyl tend to be more temperature-sensitive, and head strikes is often times the result of over heating these media.

In this case, the media has a paper backer, and the adhesive on the media is tunneling. Tunneling is more often related to adhesive degradation, or the film's inability to adapt to the serpentine paper path used in the HP Latex L2 and L3 machines.

 

[Snydo]

find a profile with 18-24 Pass UNI-dircectional and cut the heat waaaay back and you should be fine. The "re-positionable" stuff barely has a bond with its backer and therefore any heat stress and it releases.

 

[dypinc]

find a profile with 18-24 Pass UNI-dircectional and cut the heat waaaay back and you should be fine. The "re-positionable" stuff barely has a bond with its backer and therefore any heat stress and it releases.

Why not find out what works, pass and temperature wise, etc. first, and then create a profile. Seems like a whole lot of guesswork the other way.

 

[Snydo]

Why not find out what works, pass and temperature wise, etc. first, and then create a profile. Seems like a whole lot of guesswork the other way.

What guesswork? All I'm saying is if you have a profile that gives you the colors you are looking for just lower the temps and slow way down to minimize tunneling.

 

[dypinc]

What guesswork? All I'm saying is if you have a profile that gives you the colors you are looking for just lower the temps and slow way down to minimize tunneling.

"gives you colors you are looking for" What is that supposed to mean other than guesswork?

You ether have accurate colors or you don't. For that matter you can take any profile to test the passes and temp for this material. When you get them where you want them you are not going to have a accurate profile anyhow.

So why not get your passes and temps where you need them when printing your first target in the Ink limiting/linearization process and then go on to create your profile. Seems this would save a lot of time, trouble and media.

 

[Dennis422]

Thanks guys. I like the profile (color) that I use now. I will try to lower down the heat and increase the passes.

 

[dypinc]

Thanks guys. I like the profile (color) that I use now. I will try to lower down the heat and increase the passes.

For the material you are using don't forget about adjusting tension as well.