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l25500 greasy prints

ProWraps

ProWraps

New Member
anyone else experiencing this?

i see this as a huge problem. i cant tell if its condensation on the prints or if its greasy coming off the printer.

so far they seem to be coming off dry, but upon lamination, there are some VERY wet/greasy spots on the prints. only on certain colors. we did a lam/heat/pull test and the lam seemed to adhere OKAY. by OKAY i mean not going anywhere, tear the vinyl if you try to remove it.

we are laming right off the machine now as we have caught up to the printers. but we also lamed about 36 rolls that were printed at least a day before we lamed them. more grease on the prints that were lamed after longer periods of time rather than the ones that came right off the printer, but still some greasy feeling on the ones that only sat for about an hour or so. specifically the DEEP greens and DEEP blues. keep in mind the job is all greens and blues. no red, yellows, etc. so i dont have a good control group for those colors.

the perfectionist in me does have me a bit worried.

the one and only job we have ran on our two l25500's are about 30,000 sq/ft so we do have a hell of a test bed.

again, anyone else expereincing this?
 
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RobbyMac

New Member
I'm printing a hauler wrap now. Using 100/100/100/100 for my blacks, but for some reason my burgundy was getting a lil greasy on my test prints. I bumped the heat 5 degrees at the head and 10 degrees post. it seems to have cured the problem for the moment. Has me worried because this is the first large wrap we're attempting with this machine.
 
ProWraps

ProWraps

New Member
thanks bly! im going to print it out. its just weird cause it increases over time.

and with the latex there is no rolling out prints to outgas. so how does it increase?

being a programmer/error checker, im going into what is the problem mode.
 
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wedosigns

New Member
Could it be the vinyl? Bad batch? or is it on happening on different substrates?
Yes I did read you are printing huge job, but was it there before you loaded that substatrate or changed rolls.
 
dypinc

dypinc

New Member
RobbyMac said:
I'm printing a hauler wrap now. Using 100/100/100/100 for my blacks, but for some reason my burgundy was getting a lil greasy on my test prints. I bumped the heat 5 degrees at the head and 10 degrees post. it seems to have cured the problem for the moment. Has me worried because this is the first large wrap we're attempting with this machine.
Click to expand...

You can't use that much ink. You should be able to get a great black by throwing only 100% black at it. That is 100% black not linearized or profiled black.

As for ink not drying curing heat is one issue, the other is to much ink, especially a problem when to much light inks are added. I have seen may canned profiles with this problem. You only want light inks from 20% to 40% (depends on materials) in the light areas and none from 80% on up. If you are having drying problems in darker colors make sure your not laying light inks down in those dark colors.
 
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RobbyMac

New Member
I've set my ink limits, is that not enough? The blacks were drying fine, but like prowraps noticed in his, the longer I printed into a roll, the greasier the burgundy got.

Problem is I have gradients (burgundy & golds) fading to black. So 100% black isn't an option without the gradients looking muddy. It's 90% raster.

We're prininting 10p now, which runs around 5" per min. I'd like to drop it to 8p to speed it up a tad, but we're finishing this one up before I test the heat/ink at 8p.
 
ddarlak

ddarlak

Go Bills!
If you take a heat gun to your greasy prints do they cure?
Click to expand...

yes, they will.

i had this same problem with material i didn't have a profile for and was trying to use a similar HP profile for. it took me awhile, and i max'd out both heat setting and was still getting the greasy print.

i bumped up the airflow from 30% to 40% and the prints came out perfect.

<using Flexi 10 as my RIP>
 
ddarlak

ddarlak

Go Bills!
talking to a printer tech yesterday and he stated that flexi's RIP is using way too much ink, so us folk who are love/stuck with flexi will be tweaking a bit i guess......
 
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HulkSmash

HulkSmash

New Member
ddarlak said:
talking to a printer tech yesterday and he stated that flexi's RIP using way too much ink, so us folk who are love/stuck with flexi will be tweaking a bit i guess......
Click to expand...

I'm REALLY not trying to dog flexi at ALL. But as i said before they are not ready for the latex technology. it lays WAY too much ink. I'm almost 100% sure that their profiles aren't written correctly. They work, but there's always a few things wrong with them. Also i tried flexi when i first got mine, and then i got caldera.. the amount of options available to the latex that caldera/onyx has is about 75 times, (no joke) more then what flexi had available. They SHOULD send out another FREE OF CHARGE update soon to fix a lot of these issues. Sorry your experiences weren't as good... but with mine.. i havn't printed 30k sqft yet, maybe about 23k, still not one single issue....I can tell you.. if you can afford it you should try another RIP. They're faster, much more organized, and just makes printing much more enjoyable. Hope all the issues get sorted out
 
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Hicalibersigns

New Member
We are using Onyx 10 and have not seen this problem. We have done quite a few large box truck wraps with a lot of black area. We have Flexi, but seldom use it.
 
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signswi

New Member
It's fixable as has been covered, have also not seen this particular issue on Onyx with canned profiles as the OEMs figured out the heat/airflow pretty well (was actually able to drop heat a decent amount off the Oracal profiles). Flexi is not a good rip.
 
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RobbyMac

New Member
Today we're getting condensation, which is dripping onto the prints. We've had alot of rain lately, which has likely bumped the humidity up. We've also never had this printer running at such long stretches until the past few days.

Luckily we caught it early, and after every 3-4 panels we wipe down the front grate which is working for now.
 
ProWraps

ProWraps

New Member
ok so the million $ question since this issue seems to be common.

what does it do to the prints after they are laminated?
 
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RobbyMac

New Member
The grease? If it'd bad I don't think lam will stick in the greasy areas.
We laid app tape on it and couldn't get it to stick and got some ink transfer on the adhesive. Hell I could wipe it with my finger and get ink transfer.

When we first got this machine, we had done a midget wrap. A week later the lam separated from the vinyl, and we could only assume it was because the ink was not completely dried. The inky left a residue on the adhesive of the lam, and the vinyl was still stuck, but the lam was tenting and lifting wherever it had been worked in. That wrap had alot of black/dark colors, and we had not yet dialed in the profile or ink limits yet. Back then we reprinted with more heat and the issue did not return a second time.
 
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