Some advice for a new latex user please

[Tony Hogarth]

Hi folks, new to this forum and just hoping that some of you experts can help a brother out.

We recently bought a LX850 with textile kit and a L2550. Up until now things have been fine although after two months in we are only now starting to put our 850 into any decent production runs. I am having real problems getting prints to be colourfast on either machine and after having a job bounce back last week because it was running in the rain the boss has taken to rubbing everything hard with a damp piece of fabric when it comes off the machine. Although dry to the touch this invariably resulted in ink on the fabric. Also the prints seem to be easily scratched and flag material creases to the point of uselessness.


We have tried using Hp medians with the Hp recommended profiles but still seem to get the same results. I was wondering just what you guys deem "acceptable" from your machines or does this sound odd to you.


The material which actually ran was a Hp biodegradable banner printed on our L25500 and I have tried upping the temps until the media wrinkles to no avail. Any ideas?

 

[signswi]

Check that your environmental conditions are within recommendations.

 

[Tony Hogarth]

The building which we're in is still 'a work in progress' so temperatures fluctuate. I know the boss is reluctant to spend money on any sort of climate control if it isn't really neccessary. Does the ambient temp make enough difference to stop the inks being colourfast?

Thanks,

Tony

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Yes temp and humidity makes a huge difference...

Also any outdoor prints should be laminated, although not technically a requirement it just protects the prints from the environment and increases its longevity.

 

[signswi]

No one laminates banners.

OP, get your environmental conditions in order, you can't run these machines without a stable environment. The heat and fan settings need to be dialed in to those specific conditions or you won't get proper curing (oily prints that can rub off).

 

[brendan99]

fabric prints on hp

Hi tony

sorry to hear about your problems - we experimented for ages with large format fabric and our latex printer and then gave up - it always rubs off especially for big fabric backdrops etc.... we realised we needed another machine to do the job properly!!

Its just not dye sublimation no matter how much we hoped it would be!!

 

[Bly]

I thought the new inks for the larger latex machines was reformulated to work better on fabrics?

 

[ProWraps]

fabric (canvas) on our latex's sucks major. we dont even bother with it anymore.

 

[nate]

The 610 Inks for the LX800 and up are much better than the original ones. One of the major problems was that Cyan tended to run when hit with water, no matter how dry it was on the fabric. The black ink is also a much deeper, glossier black. These are the same inks as in the L26500, though sadly are not available for use in the L25500.

Fisher Textiles is a good start for the latex fabrics. We print a lot of 8874GF and it looks great. In addition, many, if not all of the Ultraflex "C" series medias work great as well.

 

[Slamboni]

environs

I laminated a banner for my kid and put it on the floor so it would be vomit and juice proof. grommets were a bad idea though. We got a dehumidifier from wal mart and set it right under our hp and print quality increased instantly. plus we keep teh temp 72-74 in here at all times. your people there wouldn't want to waste money on ruined rolls of vinyl so keep the conditions right or they'll have to pay for more $$ rolls.

 

[Ditchmiester]

This is a little off topic but have any of you printed on polycarb (lexan) on the HP Latex machines? if so how is the adhesion? Better or worse than standard solvent printers. Thanks.

 

[Slamboni]

profiles

after a day of research and experimenting i finally found a place to get profiles for my hp latex printer!

http://graphixdirect.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11&Itemid=11

granted these are profiles for the L25500 and i run the 6500, but they work.

I had a hell of a time finding icc profiles that would work both with the hp and flexi sai production manager. the hp site doesn't have very many profiles and the flexi site only seems to have roland iccs. individual material roll manufacturers websites were even harder to find profiles in, requiring a username/password sign in dealy. You'd think the company that sold me the rolls of material would be helpful in getting me the profiles, but this was not the case either. So hopefully I can continue to check the hp site and dl the profiles as they become available there, but until then I'm just going to use the L25500 profiles. Is anyone else doing this?