Need Help Mounting Acrylic Prints

[Joel Freitas]

Hi,

I need advise in how to mount acrylic prints. We print directly in a flatbed printer (mirror) but then i want to mount that print in a white backing to finish the product. The issue is that i don't know which technique is better:

1- Use optically clear 2 sided tape ( GRIMCO offers one) but it's time consuming and i think break the entire simplicity of direct print: can get bubbles, trim edges, skew, etc.

2- Stick a clear adhesive white vinyl on the back: this may cause that the ink fall from the acrylic given that sometimes the adhesive on the vinyl is stronger than ink adhesion to the acrylic.

3- Use a mounting foam or something that comes with adhesive on one side.. Never tried

I'm attaching some images of the final product that i want to create fro reference

Thank you in advance!

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

Our UV printer has white, so we just back it up with 2 layers of that for an excellent result.
I'm assuming yours doesn't have a white channel, hence your post.
I would mount a roll of white on your laminator and run it through that then trim off the edges carefully.
Provided you have good ink adhesion to the acrylic, it should hold up. Perhaps use Plaskolite Optix DA acrylic which is specially formulated for UV printing.
Mount with standoffs like in your image. Should look a treat!

 

[MikePro]

if your UV printer doesn't have white, would it be possiblet to just backspray with some white acrylic polyurethane?

 

[Joel Freitas]

Our UV printer has white, so we just back it up with 2 layers of that for an excellent result.
I'm assuming yours doesn't have a white channel, hence your post.
I would mount a roll of white on your laminator and run it through that then trim off the edges carefully.
Provided you have good ink adhesion to the acrylic, it should hold up. Perhaps use Plaskolite Optix DA acrylic which is specially formulated for UV printing.
Mount with standoffs like in your image. Should look a treat!

Our Flatbed has the white option but we're running it without the white option since we are not finding any job with white to print. Do you think it's a good idea to set the white all the time? Our FB is an HP FB550

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

I'm not sure how hard it is to keep the white channel clean on an FB550. It's not too bad on an Arizona. Just needs a good purge every few days if not in use.
There are others on here with the FB, so hopefully one of them can offer some advice.