Reverse Wound

[Suz]

Hey dudes and darlings (girls),
Okay, you can all be darlings...
Got a silly question:

My new rolls of banner materials are reverse wound. To date, I've either used a non reverse wound, or double sided, so have not had this issue, but I'm not sure how to get my HP L2550 printer to work without unrolling the material and then rewinding it.

I rewound a roll yesterday and right before a rush print job. If I just turn the roll around, my machine tells me that the material is not in the printer or that I need to load material or something like that.

Any quick answers? Yes, I did take a little time to try to find it in the manual, but kept having to throw the book down when a Customer walked in.

Help! Oh, and

 

[SightLine]

No idea on where it might be but my guess is that the machine has a material sensor that does not get covered when a reverse wound roll is loaded. Probably a small hole or opening somewhere, find that and temoprarily stick a small peice of tape over it. I know Mimaki's have one but it gets covered whichever way you put the roll but if you are trying to print to the last few inches of a roll you have to cover it to get that last few inches to print.

 

[GB2]

It doesn't matter, just load the material the right way and press OK when you get that message. The machine should next detect the roll direction and operate normally.

 

[dypinc]

All my banner material is inside print. I guess that is what you mean by reverse wound?

I just load the roll so that the side I want to print on is up on the platen. The L25500 always determines which direction the feed rollers is turning. I have never ever had a loading error from inside print wound material or for that matter outside print material.

Are you letting the L25500 automatically load?

 

[Suz]

Yes, letting it load automatically. This is when I get the error message.

Thanks for all the answers, I'll goof around with it more on Monday. I will probably put a call in to my Dealer as well. They'll probably have an answer.

Again, thank you all!

All my banner material is inside print. I guess that is what you mean by reverse wound?

I just load the roll so that the side I want to print on is up on the platen. The L25500 always determines which direction the feed rollers is turning. I have never ever had a loading error from inside print wound material or for that matter outside print material.

Are you letting the L25500 automatically load?

 

[Tim Aucoin]

Mine also detects roll wind direction and just works!!

 

[Freese]

Manual load it. Reverse round material gets curled so I always feed it past the window.

 

[StarSign]

You should be able to just turn the roll around, works for us

 

[jayhawksigns]

Doing some double-sided banners right now on ours, works just fine.

 

[MikeD]

the material could have some memory of being tightly reverse wound resulting in a upward bow right over where your media sensor is. Maybe you could cover it with tape, but be sure to watch the end of the roll so you don't end up printing on the bare platen.

 

[tattoo.dan]

Just load the roll opposite and "manual" load it. make sure the banner it taunt coming off of the roll so the printer can detect roll direction. Even if it says it can't detect, just skip it and all is fine!

 

[signswi]

Yep, just load the roll opposite normal wind and manual load (manual load is ...so...much...faster... ).

You may encounter head strikes though due to material memory so feed out a lot of lead. We ask our vendors to supply banner normal wound now that we mainly use HPs.

 

[Suz]

Thank you all! Your help is so much appreciated!!! I did call my material supply place (local Grimco) and asked them what the trick was for the reverse wound. I talked to one of their Technicians (Jackie) who told me to clean the sensor off, it was probably just dirty and not reading correctly. Haven't done that yet, but will soon. We now have another problem, C-LC print head needs to be replaced. Gotta call HP now and get my "FREE" repacement. It is under warranty, yay! Goodness! Thank you again everyone!

 

[Suz]

I called HP today about print head problem, looks like all my heads aren't firing. So, total replacement on all 6 printheads, YES! I knew there was something wrong from the beginning! Also, got firmware update. Tech was surprised at how bad the print head test looked. I took a photo of it and emailed it to him. Gonna get this thing working right at last!

 

[MikePro]

never had an issue with reverse-wound material. i always just flip the roll around so that it feeds printside-up, no matter which way its wound.

i actually prefer reverse-wound.... get more out of the roll when I don't have to worry about fingerprints from handling the media while loading/unloading.

 

[Suz]

Mike, thank you for your input. I'm so glad you don't have any issues. When I get past my other issues, I can focus on what I am doing wrong. Should be simple, right?

 

[MikePro]

o? i'm sorry if I sounded like a stink. was just chiming in and +1'ing my postcount, I guess

 

[ProWraps]

load as normal. and manual load as explained above.

hit banner material on the first menu that pops up. it will load, do its skew test and then a feed calibration.

if you are getting an error, post up what the error code is, and call hp support. it shouldnt be happening.

 

[Suz]

Mike, No, you no stinkie! Hehe! I didn't mean to sound like the Stink Police. Whatever that is? Really, I'm glad to know you don't have any problems, that encouraged me. That is my goal, to have less problems and if others are able to do this, then I am too!

 

[Suz]

Thanks Pro! Yes, I called yesterday to HP, working through these problems. You are right, should not be happening. But there are lots of little issues (error codes) and I'm working through them all. Thank you!