Printing Screen Positives

[Susan Stewart]

Good morning. I'm reaching out to you all in the hopes that someone can help us out. We are printing screen positives using a HP Latex 310 printer, and the clear backlit polyester film we are using is Natura SO800W 54" roll with a 3" core. The profile that we are using and that we have used for almost 10 years is HP Backlit Polyester Film, and we have had little to no trouble. We are in a climate controlled environment. We are using Flexi Print HP Basic Edition for our RIP.

We have been having an issue with our prints bleeding lately. We installed a new optimizer printhead. We did a printhead alignment. We tried going up on the optimizer level. We thought maybe we have a bad roll of film. We got a new roll with a different lot number, and we are still having this issue. As the film is coming out, it has some kind of a haze / condensation of the film. See attached video. Edit: I tried to upload video showing the moisture on the film, but it wouldn't let me.

We did notice that the drive belt has some worn spots on it. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with our issue, but we do have a new one on order. The problem is finding a tech to come replace it for us. Do anyone happen to know of one in the Indiana area?

We have tried multiple other profiles with no success. We just ordered a roll of HP film to try a different brand. Does anyone have a suggested manufacturer of the film that works better than others?

I'm attaching some pictures for you to see our issue.

 

[jochwat]

We use Magic SCF-7 successfully on an HP 365. However, it's more costly (and we only use a 30" roll), and about 1 and a 1/2 mils thinner than the Natura you're using.

So the Natura film is what you've been using all this time and it's only now showing these issues, correct? We originally were using the installed HP Backlit film profile, but had some issues with sizing and actually dropped the heat down some. I have no suggestions for what you're experiencing right now though aside from the usual "bad roll?" possibility. Does it look like this initially when the ink is laid down, or does it not spread out like that until after it's coming out of the printer? Wondering if it's a heat issue (not enough? failing heater?). I always check the print when it starts with the internal light out of my usual paranoia, so just curious when the ink issue is starts...

 

[Susan Stewart]

We previously used HP film, but we switched to Natura about a year ago due to availability issues with the HP film.

When you're looking through the plastic panel, the ink looks like it's fine while it's printing. As it exits the printer that's
when you see the bleeding. The display screen is showing the correct heat, and if you put your hand by where the film exits, you can feel the heat coming out.

The haze / condensation is a new thing that is happening since this problem started. The haze seems more prominent when we are printing using a lot of ink.

Thank you for the media suggestion.

 

[d fleming]

That looks like either when I'm not paying attention and load a sheet of film in my desktop printer on the wrong side or too much ink. Maybe curing. If it is clean from the printhead and spreads and hasn't before I go along with maybe bad film. Interested to see what happens with another brand.

 

[ikarasu]

Run a force drop detection to see if you have bad heads, I would also try a different material just to rule on it being the material.

Sometimes I had can be bad as you put it in, force drop detection usually detects whether it's bad or not... I've only ever done them on the 560 and 700 so I'm not 100% sure they can be done on your machine but it should be possible. Whenever we have print related issues whether the printer says the head is good or not we do a detection and nine out of 10 times swapping heads fixes the issue.

It'd be nice if HP didn't hide it behind the service menu

 

[Ian Stewart-Koster]

Ouch!
That almost has a static effect look to me... ie if I try and brush letter corro ink on corro plastci, the static makes it jump about in tiny spiders, unless I destatic charge the sheets first. Dry weather is worst.

 

[Susan Stewart]

Update:
It looks like it was the media. We got an HP roll of clear film in today to try, and the results were great. I attached pictures of the bleeding we were getting and what we printed on the new media.