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"Problems" with printing on translucent material.

Briansos

Briansos

New Member
Greetings

The focus of my interest is how to get clean, solid prints on a translucent material that is being applied to acrylic/tough glass for used in backlit signs. Our printers are Mimaki JV33-160s, if this is better moved to the Mimaki section, mods please feel free to do so. Here are the bulleted points:

• We use Mimaki JV33-160
• We use Wasatch Softrip ver 6.3
• We print on Orajet 3850-010 translucent

Now the "problem's" we are having are two main things:

• A regular pass print looks fine, but washes out when lit up
• Despite the print looking nice- minor to no banding, maybe a few tiny spots of something like dirt or solvent residue, when the print becomes lit up, it highlits all these minor things and suddenly they are "big" problems.

My boss wants me to be an "expert" on how to get this stuff running like a dream, and I could go into detail on the lack of true understanding of how printers really run vs how he thinks they should run, but I wont. So, my questions can best be focused into:

• What is a good way to get prints to look like they should, yet not wash out? We currently run a double pass of ink, which darkens the print to the normal daylight, but comes out looking like it should, more or less, when lit.

• Is the highlighting of inperfections just a natural problem when working with translucent material and backlit signs?

If any more information is needed, please let me know. Thank you all for your time.
 
mbarden

mbarden

New Member
The only way to get perfect printed translucent graphics on a roll-fed, solvent or mild solvent printer is to make 2 seperate prints. One on your translucent and one on clear. Use a light table to line them up and apply the clear to your substrate and then apply your translucent. This makes it a very expensive thing to do.
Mike B
Big River Sign Co
 
HaroldDesign

HaroldDesign

New Member
I've experienced problems with backlit substrates mainly with the "washed out" look. Most of them have a coating on top of a clear film. Use a film that is translucent in itself. Opti-UV Backlit Film (Advantage) is one you may want to try.

Edit: You're not using UV. Try Opti-Solve Basic Backlit (Advantage)
 
Morph1

Morph1

Print all
I got my own technique of printing translucents...,
I do print it just on clear but I lay the vinyl twice , 2 layer print, 720 x 1440 adjust ink levels , I get one nice solid print that illuminates great and appears superb during the day time...

Translucent white had been giving me a lot of problems...
 
sjm

sjm

New Member
We find printing to a clear PSA vinyl and laminating if required and then mounting to a sign white is a good alternative.

Of course it goes without saying if you are producing a backlit do increase your saturation.
 
Letterbox Mike

Letterbox Mike

New Member
The right way to do it (albeit also the challenging way) is as has already been said. Two prints layered. The bottom print should be on clear vinyl. I recommend printing this layer with two ink passes. The top print should be on translucent white, just a single ink layer. The colors will be correct and not oversaturated or too dark during daylight hours because you can only see one layer of ink. At night, those two extra layers of ink on the clear vinyl below the translucent also light up giving the print plenty of density at night for nice rich and somewhat accurate color. But it's tricky to perfectly line the two prints up when mounting, if they're not exact or at least very close the print will look blurry at night.

We tried and tried Orajet 3850 but could not get good quality on it. It's white point is extremely yellow so anything you do with a white background will have a weird "parchment" look at night in the white space. We also had the surface contamination issues you describe. We switched to Avery MPI 2050 (used to be 2150) a couple years ago and so far it's much much better (surprisingly). Very little if any surface contamination, the white point is actually white at night, and it takes more ink than the Orajet product.

Good luck!
 
astro8

astro8

New Member
The best way to print a solvent backlit graphic that has the equivalent look to a waterbased print is to print on backlit solvent film (not translucent vinyl) with high number of passes using one of your existing profiles ( but be careful of how the blacks lay down...usually too much) and usually 2 layers of ink ...or make your own profile on a lightbox...lots of uni directional passes to get some ink drying time and no banding at all, high heat and mount reverse to clear acrylic with double-sided mounting film (no lamination)....this way the prints of our GS6000's are comparable to the 12 colour waterbased Displaymaker we use for amazing albeit very expensive but a hell of a lot faster backlit graphics....cost and labour isn't bad at all and far less hassle than lining up two separate prints from 2 different materials that may or may not come out of the printer the same size.
 
sjm

sjm

New Member
insignia said:
The right way to do it (albeit also the challenging way) is as has already been said. Two prints layered. The bottom print should be on clear vinyl. I recommend printing this layer with two ink passes. The top print should be on translucent white, just a single ink layer. The colors will be correct and not oversaturated or too dark during daylight hours because you can only see one layer of ink. At night, those two extra layers of ink on the clear vinyl below the translucent also light up giving the print plenty of density at night for nice rich and somewhat accurate color. But it's tricky to perfectly line the two prints up when mounting, if they're not exact or at least very close the print will look blurry at night.

We tried and tried Orajet 3850 but could not get good quality on it. It's white point is extremely yellow so anything you do with a white background will have a weird "parchment" look at night in the white space. We also had the surface contamination issues you describe. We switched to Avery MPI 2050 (used to be 2150) a couple years ago and so far it's much much better (surprisingly). Very little if any surface contamination, the white point is actually white at night, and it takes more ink than the Orajet product.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

There are many ways to accomplish this. There is no right and wrong way. For example one could print directly to the acrylic and back it up with a translucent white vinyl or flood fill it with white ink.

The better question to answer is what is your printers capabilities and your skill level.
 
P

petrosgraphics

New Member
we have used diffuser vinyl on the backside of of clear polycarb, printed on the translucent
vinyl, we have always used 3 M trans. never had a problem.... the diffuser vinyl seems to
smooth out the background as well as the colors of the print...... all i can say is it works for us.......
 
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