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Laminate for UV Prints?

F

F1225hgB42w

Guest
Hey Everyone,

We have been moving more of our work from our solvent (Epson) printers to our hybrid UV printer (CET). The main reasons are the prints are faster, dry instantly, and the ink costs less on our UV.

Most of the work is printing onto 3M intermediate vinyl (IJ40) for window graphics, wood signs, etc. And always gets applied to flat surfaces (anything with heavy contours we will still use our Epsons for). But we like to put a laminate on our prints for extra durability and ease of install (reduces stretch of the vinyl), but our calendared laminate from 3M shows silvering on UV prints.

We've tried the MacTac UV laminate, but it was worse in our tests than just a normal 3M laminate. Recently (as in yesterday) we tried Drytac's Interlam Pro UV and it looks pretty good, but not perfect. So I was hoping someone could recommend a laminate they use (calendared) that would work well on UV prints and not show the silvering.

Thank you in advance for your suggestions!

Matt

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Bly

Bly

New Member
I got a couple of rolls of Protac from Drytac which work well.
The adhesive is thicker so flows into the UV ink's texture pretty well.
The other option is to use cast but the cost is a killer.
 
Corwin Steeves

Corwin Steeves

Large format printer to the stars
Gotta warm those rollers up when you're laminating. (90-100 degrees) Once the lam is soft is should sink down in and get rid of most of that silvering. I can tell instantly when our guys didn't warm them up, especially on dark prints.
 
F

F1225hgB42w

Guest
All, thanks for the suggestions. I have used the MacTac and Interlam Pro (both seem to be at reasonable, but slightly higher price points than my normal economy calendared laminate, but offer five years of expected life vs. two with my normal economy lam). As mentioned the oracal lam is very pricey which takes it out of the running. I do have my workers laminate with 100 -120 degrees of heat using either our Seal pro 64d or our drytac jet mount pro laminators. I will give the Interlam Pro another good evaluation, the matte finish looked pretty good, but other other finishes (especially gloss) had lots of silvering in our initial testing. I will also look at the other suggestions. Thanks!

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