Newbie Question about Material

[Ghost Prophet]

I'm trying to print black on some metallic silver vinyl we have and it's not coming out very good... Looks fine on other matte materials.

Is there a secret to printing on metallic?

 

[Ghost Prophet]

Did a search and found that you can print on clear and then apply it over metallic like laminate... This really the best solution?

 

[Bill Modzel]

What brand of metallic are you attempting to print on? We print on HP Arlon and Gerber's metallic silver all the time without issue.

 

[Fred Weiss]

My first guess is that you are not using Gerber vinyl and/or Gerber foils. Black foil is particularly troublesome as is Oracal vinyl.

To be clear ... I Edge print primarily with Apex foils (rebranded Duracoat) and used to use a lot of Oracal films. A good while back i started having transfer problems where black foil and Oracal films were combined. In every instance, the foil would print just fine on other films and other foils would print just fine on the film giving the problem.

The solution, for me, was to keep some Gerber Spot Black foil on hand for problem prints and to phase out the Oracal in favor of Gerber/3M vinyl. In particular, black third party foils seem to have the greatest problem with not printing well on certain vinyls.

 

[Billct2]

Are you printing on metallic silver or "shiny" silver?
If metallic try using a primer coat of black.
If shiny the only one we have had success with is R Tape's., still a double hit.

 

[Ghost Prophet]

Sorry I don't know what brand vinyl this is as it was given to us with the machine... The foil is Gerber Super Opaque Black though. And applying it to clear is working pretty good.