Printing full bleed on aluminum blanks on flatbed - jigs?

[jdwilliams1]

Hello everyone,

This is something I should have asked some time ago but we print on aluminum .040, .063 in various shapes and print full bleed.

We are looking for the best solution, currently we have older flatbeds that we print our layout on the table and then just align all of our blanks and then print. The down side it is gets ink on the table that builds up over time which has to be reprinted and scraped off.

So we looked into Vacu Bond paper which is nice but after a few hours of use it seems to get baggy or loose on the table even with the vacuum on. We currently us the Mimaki JF1631 but we have two new JFX200 coming. The printers use LED light rather than the old bulbs, so I am curious to see if the LEDs will put off less heat and maybe that is what is causing the Vacu Bond paper to get baggy. We tape the paper down which we have been told not to but if we do not our vacuum does nto pull it down all the way.

Final option is have jigs cut by someone on a CNC machine, this is nice because they can be preloaded, but the problem I see with them is if we print full bleed using the jigs won't ink build up over time and have to be scraped off the jig over and over?

Anyone else print full bleed using any of these options? What am I missing? What would you recommend?

Thanks
Jay

 

[ikarasu]

We cut a Coro jig and just use that. Yes, ink piles up.. but Coro is cheap enough we just throw it out.

Buy some methanol, after your done using your jig... Spray it with methanol and let it sit for 5 mins. It'll take seconds to wipe off if you do that - the trick is to do it at the end of the day and not let it bake over a few days.

Short runs I just grab scrap vinyl, usually half inhalf inch strips... Stick it under by a tenth of an inch so it does the affected the suctioning, and throw it out when done.


If your blanks are the same size, you could run two strips of painters tape down the length of the belt... Then you only worry about width. Takes 5-10 seconds to run length width wise for each blank.. but it's anoying.

Lots of different stuff to try, just need to find what's the best for your production .

 

[Pauly]

I dont know how many sheets you have on the bed at once or size. I never print on my table. creates more work later on and looks messy.

But i would be trying other vacuum bond sheets. Or even get really thin/low GSM non coated paper.

 

[ikarasu]

I've never heard of vacuum bind before. We don't do many full bleeds... So I think it'd be perfect for us.

I've only seen over vacuum bond, and can't find it for sale in Canada...

Are there any other brands / a different product name I could look for?

 

[Bly]

We use 3mm MDF on our Zund router table. I imagine it'd work just as well on a flatbed printer.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

ikarasu, butcher/kraft paper works just as well... minus the Oce price tag.
We use it when we know jobs are going to get messy on the table. We buy 60" x 400 yard rolls for $90 or so.
Vacuum on the Arizona is enough to penetrate the paper and still hold the media down.

 

[Bly]

For masking our flatbed we use the plastic liner from Avery 6460 lam.
It sucks down great and costs nothing.
If there's only a couple of items you can lay a full cover, print the panel template then cut just inside the shape with a knife. Peel out the centre and there's your jig.