Prepping with isopropyl before printing

[jtiii]

I have seen a few posts with folks talking about getting rid of hand grease or other contaminants by wiping the substrate before running through your printer. To be clear I'm not talking about doing this before every print job or anything crazy like that. Just in cases like, for instance, this post where I got some vinyl in that wouldn't take ink.

My question is, how do y'all do this? Every time we've tried to wipe vinyl before printing the print comes out with streaks where we wiped it and it's unusable. Maybe I'm using the wrong towel or the wrong concentration of alcohol, or the wrong number of wipes...

 

[oksigns]

I have seen a few posts with folks talking about getting rid of hand grease or other contaminants by wiping the substrate before running through your printer. To be clear I'm not talking about doing this before every print job or anything crazy like that. Just in cases like, for instance, this post where I got some vinyl in that wouldn't take ink.

My question is, how do y'all do this? Every time we've tried to wipe vinyl before printing the print comes out with streaks where we wiped it and it's unusable. Maybe I'm using the wrong towel or the wrong concentration of alcohol, or the wrong number of wipes...

I use wypall sheets that only have a small amount of alcohol. I wipe only the places that are soiled and dry it up immediately. I can then check the surface reflection to see if it was cleaned. Any more elbow grease needed and I call it a loss.

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

I only find it necessary to wipe down the first couple of yards of a new roll of media and when doing so allow plenty of time for the alcohol to completely dry, in other words like 15 minutes at least. Then I'll usually give it one good going over with a dust cloth before printing. The first couple yards always seem to be contaminated, but once I get into the roll beyond those first couple yards, I just load up my media with wrap installer gloves from there on out and never have contamination issues. Ours are Avery Dennison gloves and they appear to be some sort of stretchy synthetic cloth like polyester/spandex.

 

[myront]

We use alcohol on rigid media only. Rolled media is fed out about 3ft before printing anyway so any grime is passed.

 

[DerbyCitySignGuy]

91% IPA on poly wipes. No streaks.

It might go without saying, but never, ever, ever use IPA on acrylic.