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Media advice for Latex 335

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Signvinyl

New Member
I recently bought a 2nd hand HP LATEX 360 and it looks promising. The installation went smoothly, with a few minor problems due to the profiling of the Arlon media. Machine is easy to operate and in average it delivers a good print quality.

I am a versatile sign-maker who literally prints everything that can be entered in the printer. Think of car wrapping vinyl, transparent film for windows, canvas, banner.

My experience with canvas and (thin) banner on 360 is good. Reflective vinyl and thicker banner are more difficult to print, and need higher curing temperature.

I am curious for an advice about any type of media that I should better not use on my Latex HP to prevent a bad result and waste of material, time and money.

Any advice is welcome.
 
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ikarasu

Active Member
3m 3290 reflective is a no go.

Pretty much if it says it's for digital printing it should work... If you want to be really safe, only use media you can download profiles for.
 
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Signvinyl

New Member
Thanks for advice ikarasu.

Indeed, the reflective media such as 3M 3290 seems to be problematic. Recently I printed some Avery HV 1200 reflective. Dropped the temp and increased the vacuum from 40 to 70 still getting head strikes.

Probably I need to learn the best settings case by case.
 
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ikarasu

Active Member
Head strikes shouldn't be much of an issue. Some media you need to advance out of the machine before printing to prevent initial media jam, the downside to the latex machines is media tends to warm up and hit the heater on the way out, causing a head strike / jam. If the media warps in heat... Attaching it to the take up reel will hold.it down and should prevent all / most head strikes also.

Of course you waste a lot of material that way... So it's best to use a banner or some other heavy material, tape it to the media and attach it to the take up reel.

The main problem with reflective nnt ment for printing is the ink doesn't adhere properly .You can take masking tape and it'll peel it off easily.
 
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Signvinyl

New Member
If I'm correct, Ultraflex is not certified/tested by HP which they also confirms to have a problems with.

I checked some forums and in generally it looks as 360 has longer feed tray w/o roller, compared to e.g. 260. The material has more surface contact and it creates more surface tension, causing the material to bunch up and create a head crash.

In next 2 weeks I have to print a mix of different jobs on Pongs Artist Canvas and 3M IJ500, crossing fingers for a stable and good output. :)
 
P Wagner

P Wagner

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Latex performance on 3M High Intensity Reflective 3939 Series, 3M Diamond Grade 4000 Series, and 3M 680 Series are all very good, and Latex ink adhesion is terrific on these medias. Due to the memory and thickness of the HIP and DG products, use of the TUR or similar weight is recommended to provide forward tension and forces the media to lay flat on the printer platen.
 
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flyplainsdrifta

flyplainsdrifta

New Member
understandable, i don't even touch 2sided on my r2r, i end up using uv cause id hate to run a 12 foot side only to have it get chewed re running it thru a latex machine. did it once, never again. banners tough on there to really dial it in perfect. took me a couple days of fine tuning before i got comfy with the settings
 
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twmiller24

New Member
flyplainsdrifta said:
understandable, i don't even touch 2sided on my r2r, i end up using uv cause id hate to run a 12 foot side only to have it get chewed re running it thru a latex machine. did it once, never again. banners tough on there to really dial it in perfect. took me a couple days of fine tuning before i got comfy with the settings
Click to expand...
We run most things on our L360. We have had problem with some reflective, but the Oracal 5600 runs fine. It took us a lot of fine tuning settings, but the banner material runs pretty well now, too.
 
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AKwrapguy

New Member
Signvinyl said:
I recently bought a 2nd hand HP LATEX 360 and it looks promising. The installation went smoothly, with a few minor problems due to the profiling of the Arlon media. Machine is easy to operate and in average it delivers a good print quality.

I am a versatile sign-maker who literally prints everything that can be entered in the printer. Think of car wrapping vinyl, transparent film for windows, canvas, banner.

My experience with canvas and (thin) banner on 360 is good. Reflective vinyl and thicker banner are more difficult to print, and need higher curing temperature.

I am curious for an advice about any type of media that I should better not use on my Latex HP to prevent a bad result and waste of material, time and money.

Any advice is welcome.
Click to expand...


You might be having issues due to your profiles not set up correctly. Some material might require a longer dwell time in the heaters but not as much heat. For example I have found that with stiffer materials such as HIP and DG reflective a higher pass count but lower temperature is better as it won't pucker the material. You can also decrease the heat needed by reducing the ink density so for example your having issues with reflective at lets say 6 pass, 220 degrees, with 110% ink density, and 70 on the vacuum. Maybe look at going to a 10 or 12 pass, 180 degrees, 100% ink density and 40 on the vacuum. It might take a little longer to print but it will save you frustration in the long run.

As far as preventing 'bad results and a waste of money' welcome to the wonderful world of digital printing. If you take the time to set up your profiles properly and maintain them, it will help out a lot.
 
spooledUP7

spooledUP7

New Member
I 2nd Signvinyl.
For me I always go for the lowest possible temp to maintain proper curing and I will use higher pass count to offset the lower temps. Just be sure to print a color swatch sample at the new preset settings to verify colors prior to production.
 
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BIG EASY DOES IT

New Member
P Wagner said:
Latex performance on 3M High Intensity Reflective 3939 Series, 3M Diamond Grade 4000 Series, and 3M 680 Series are all very good, and Latex ink adhesion is terrific on these medias. Due to the memory and thickness of the HIP and DG products, use of the TUR or similar weight is recommended to provide forward tension and forces the media to lay flat on the printer platen.
Click to expand...

Use edge guards on EGP, AEGP, HIP, DG, VIP DG and always put on the take up reel. No problems after that. EG is an definite no go. No matter the drying temp or the amount of optimizer you use, it will not adhere. If you think your nail doesn't scratch it. Take some water and a paper towel to it. The whole sign will start to flake off.
 
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