Printing on clear vinyl for lightbox sign on mutoh 1624

[0igo]

Whats the best settings to print onto clear vinyl? I am going to print onto Oracal clear vinyl. I have read before that doing x2passes the settings is the way to go but i dont see that option in flexisign. i have also read that the colors look washed out.

the board will have black background with white letters. do i need to run multiple prints and stack them on top of each other so that the board doesnt look all the way "white" night or can i run multiple passes in one print to stack up the ink?

oh clear vinyl will be applied to white acrylic boards

 

[Gino]

Simple question.

It must be a somewhat smaller sign, as you are using acrylic, so why not just cut out the letters on a plotter and float the black background onto the white acrylic ?? It'll last much much longer, too.​

 

[0igo]

Simple question.

It must be a somewhat smaller sign, as you are using acrylic, so why not just cut out the letters on a plotter and float the black background onto the white acrylic ?? It'll last much much longer, too.​

need to get this sign out this week but some parts do need to be printed out like the logo and parts of the sign. or else i would go that route

 

[Gino]

Well, I've never printed an entire background a solid black with any kinda success. It always looks bad at night. I would say 3 or 4 passes. The trouble with so many passes is, the print gets very dark, but with black being your only color, ya can't go wrong.

 

[0igo]

Couldn't you just print and stick twice, once with the print, then lay black over that to give the opaque look?

i guess but maybe theres a way to print once not having to print twice? do you usually print twice?

 

[0igo]

Maybe he doesn't have black on the shelf. That being said, every respectable sign shop should have black on the shelf.

Protip, if you're doing void letters with a solid background that you plan to float, just cut the vinyl, don't weed, premask and stick like normal, but this way the premask will be less saturated, keeping it nice and flat, preventing the premask from filling with fluid and wrinkling all to hell and back. Then just pluck the letters off the face.

i would cut out black and that would have have been my go to method but i currently dont have much black and second the job does have some colors like red and gray. so its not just all black and white

 

[Andy D]

Before I was able to print white I had dozens of different methods to create a "correct" backlit sign, and they would change depending on the particulars, so without seeing the layout and size it's hard to say what the best work around would be. IMHO double striking the ink usually isn't the right solution, the only two chooses when double striking is;
1. colors will look right during the day and washed out at night.
2. colors will look right at night and too dark during the day.
Usually we would apply printed clear and then register printed translucent white on top.

 

[Ssignature]

In Flexi 12, the doublestrike command is called "Print Count" and the wait between passes is called "Interval Time". It's under the Printer Options tab at the right side of the dialog box

 

[Superior_Adam]

I would wither use transparent vinyl or find someone locally that can print color white color with the back color layer at about 50%. That is the best way we have found to print a backlit sign to where it looks good day and night.