printing on brushed silver mylar

[gabagoo]

anybody tried doing this? I need to print sequential serial numbers plus there is a peacock blue and black. I dont think it will be a problem to print. The blue will take some tweaking. Anybody tried doing this? results?

 

[Sign Works]

Needs to be a material with a clear vinyl top layer such as VinylEFX by R Tape (ex Coburn Specialty Films). I believe Oracal has a printable version as well.

By the way I was recently informed by a local distributor that the original creator of the Coburn Specialty Films is producing the line under a new name "CFC Special Effects Vinyl". It's about half the cost and appears to be holding up fine on the projects that I've used it on.

 

[Steve Werner]

As long as you get a top coated or print treated material you I see no reason why you would have any problems.

 

[gabagoo]

why the top coat? I thought a solvent printer was good to print on almoat anything. Gee I did not consider Coburn, that stuff is like 5 times the price. shoot. Well I will try printing on the regular mylar and see what happens.

 

[Steve Werner]

It's going to depend on your media. Vinyl, should be easy to print, polyester not so easy. Depends on the surface. If you get something with vinyl surface you should be fine. Polyester would need a top coat or print treatment. Joe Coburn founded a new company after he sold Coburn Films to R Tape. His new company is Creative Film Corp and it offers the same great products he used to make when he owned Coburn Films and is priced competitively.

 

[JoshLoring]

I print on Rtape VinylEFX all the time and it works great. I have multiple colors in stock now a days.
Catch 22 is that you can't print to the edge or you will get lifting so you need to always incorporate a offset path where the actual diecut will take place 1/2-3/4" away from any ink.

 

[gabagoo]

what do you think will happen if you print on polyester? Ink flake off? I will run a test but if it is more of a medium term issue best I know. I was going to laminate afterwards

 

[encadtech]

Even my Colorpainter 64s solvent would not print directly on mylar - needs to be done with a thermal printer like a summa dc4 or roland pc60

 

[gabagoo]

Even my Colorpainter 64s solvent would not print directly on mylar - needs to be done with a thermal printer like a summa dc4 or roland pc60

when you say "would not" what actually happened? what was the outcome?

 

[Air Art Girl]

You want to dye sublimate the mylar. It's a polyester film so will take dye sub inks well.

 

[Bill Modzel]

We do brushed mylar on the Edge all the time. We screen print on topcoated also
using enamel or all purpose inks. I've tested most of this on my HP9000s and it
generally runs or blurs with intersecting colors.

Laminating clear vinyl and printing that would be the only way to accomplish printing on polyester other than thermal transfer or dye sub which Air Girl suggested. That would give you transparent color though.

 

[Malkin]

I'll bet that if you tried, the ink would bead up and/or drip right off the film.

However, you could attempt to take a piece of polyester film, laminate it with a clear vinyl overlay, then print on top of that.

...just a thought!

 

[GARY CULY]

ive printed a lot of stuff on that elcheapo stuff ,junked a bunch out ,but LEARNED from it too.,,turn heat off googaboo.it dries quick for some reason anyways not like the white media..use an intermedite vynle profile[3651]...now it is transparent so it dont cover real good ..i put some light camo on orange florecent other day .30%.red on orange floro = a darker orange pattern ..looked cool ..cut the stripes out and inserted on a printed graphics ,then lammed them both together ..
the printer will print on anything it seems ,the amount of ink it dumps on is the problem,,course vendors will make "special" materials that all the sheep will buy,so thats probly what you should do.i do not want to be the man that has you spend 5.00 on test materials and junk it out ,when you should have waisted 20.00 on the right material and junk it out.

 

[thewood]

If you don't have the printable brushed metal film, you can always print on clear vinyl and mount it to the brushed metal. I did a project with this method last month that turned out phenomenal.