Strange one.....

[WYLDGFI]

Getting white pinholes throughout the printed area on a blue flood. Im not sure whats going on....dont recall seeing this previously anywhere. thought it was dust or even static....cant put a finger on it at the moment. I would say the controltak is bad...but its not happening on my Vutek with hard solvent.
Attached pic.....

 

[HulkSmash]

Getting white pinholes throughout the printed area on a blue flood. Im not sure whats going on....dont recall seeing this previously anywhere. thought it was dust or even static....cant put a finger on it at the moment. I would say the controltak is bad...but its not happening on my Vutek with hard solvent.
Attached pic.....

Your media is contaminated. had the same happen with a few rolls of Avery.

 

[WYLDGFI]

Thats what I was figuring....but the hard solvent printer isnt showing evidence of it. Just gonna get some replacements at this point.

thanks

 

[OldPaint]

its called FISH EYE. somewhere someplace either in transit, storage or your shop, the vinyl has come in contact with air born silicon. been sprayin any of it in the shop to lube something????? your girlfriend have silicon implants?? just kiddin))))))

 

[WYLDGFI]

Ah....nope...no sillicone sprayed recently...or injected for that matter either! hahahah

 

[WYLDGFI]

on the same machine now...XC 540....started getting overspray. Heads are in the low position....OMG> cant win!

 

[SE SignSupply]

on the same machine now...XC 540....started getting overspray. Heads are in the low position....OMG> cant win!

Sounds like some static mixed in with media contamination. While the XC's are better than the XJ's, CT can be a bear this time of year. Any idea what the humidity is? Static can defiantly make those fisheyes worse...

 

[JoshLoring]

Can you feel the pinholes? Are they slightly raised? If so.. All of the above is wrong.
Not sure about 3M- but with Oracal, the media is made from a liquid and after solidifying goes through needle rollers. If the media isn't cured it can cause slight pinholes in the surface of the media. It's not contaminated.. Just bad media. I had it happen once in 6 years and was quickly issued a new roll.

Overspray on the XC generally means replace the most pad, manual clean and your good to go. If you don't have extra mist pads just clean and replace.

 

[WYLDGFI]

Its really strange that its happening on this particular job.....especially with this heavy blue coverage. Im running other jobs and not seeing the same thing. Nothing is raised...its more like what Old Paint described as something on the media. Im going to look at them thru a loop when I get a few minutes.
Changed the pad and manually cleaned. We actually use our cleanroom wipes from the Vuteks for the padding in the XC. Fold a few times and good to go.

 

[HulkSmash]

Can you feel the pinholes? Are they slightly raised? If so.. All of the above is wrong.
Not sure about 3M- but with Oracal, the media is made from a liquid and after solidifying goes through needle rollers. If the media isn't cured it can cause slight pinholes in the surface of the media. It's not contaminated.. Just bad media. I had it happen once in 6 years and was quickly issued a new roll.

Overspray on the XC generally means replace the most pad, manual clean and your good to go. If you don't have extra mist pads just clean and replace.

I consider Contaminated, and bad media.. the same thing

 

[JoshLoring]

Ya, if you can't feel the pinholes it's simply contaminated. No fun.

I've printed several rolls of 3M in the past week, (which I don't to much, only upon trade request) and have found one thing vs what we use on the regular. 3M media always has some type of contaminant on its media. I've never got a roll that printed without a dot or spec somewhere. Our print room is CLEAN too.

 

[kffernandez]

Overspray on the XC generally means replace the most pad, manual clean and your good to go. If you don't have extra mist pads just clean and replace.

how does the mist pad contribute to overspray? i used to think that overspray was usually a symptom of the head going bad. [assuming the ink is good]


for the OP,

since you said that it prints well with your hard solvent printer, could you try to print another color like magenta or black - without using a color profile? i have a feeling your cyan ink is contaminated. fish eye could happen when contaminants such as cleaning fluid gets mixed in with your ink. if my hunch is right, your other colors should print ok.

kelly

 

[WYLDGFI]

Im running this job on another pc of material...sample roll of 3552 and same results from it. I have run CMYK only test....and results seem fine. no pinholes or fisheyes to speak of. Trying the CMYK only again on new material to see whats up in a bit.

we've tried various materials....and now a color test of JUST CMYK bars...

Cyan Mixed with Magenta and cyan/yellow....both have pinholes. Less in the "green" more in the "purple"
Magenta Clean
Yellow Clean
Pure Cyan Clean.
Black....Pinholed.

 

[WYLDGFI]

Just ran Vinyl Banner....same crap! Last thing to look at is ink??? Bad batches?

 

[kffernandez]

ok. since your 100% CMYK color bars came out better than your usual print. i have 2 possible culprits in mind. both have to do with oversaturating your media or ink not being able to dry.

(1) if it was oversaturation, the formulation of your ink might have changed. or it might just be a bad batch. fish eyes also happens when too much ink goes into the media too soon... without letting it have the chance to dry. increasing heat, lowering your ink limits [if you do your custom profiles], or slowing your carriage down might show improvements if this was the case.
(2) the other possible culprit is that your heat is not enough. but most people here would have checked that first. so i don't think it's that.

kelly

 

[P Wagner]

ok. since your 100% CMYK color bars came out better than your usual print. i have 2 possible culprits in mind. both have to do with oversaturating your media or ink not being able to dry.

(1) if it was oversaturation, the formulation of your ink might have changed. or it might just be a bad batch. fish eyes also happens when too much ink goes into the media too soon... without letting it have the chance to dry. increasing heat, lowering your ink limits [if you do your custom profiles], or slowing your carriage down might show improvements if this was the case.
(2) the other possible culprit is that your heat is not enough. but most people here would have checked that first. so i don't think it's that.

kelly

+1

Oversaturating the media is a common cause of fisheye. That is why it is much more commonly seen in darker colors than lighter ones. Slowing down the carriage or better yet, laying down less ink (creating/ using a profile with lower ink limits) should solve this.

 

[WYLDGFI]

We seem to have come to the conclusion that Bad Batches of Cyan Ink is causing the issue here. I have run some other prints, some of which had a heavy RGB black without any visible fisheyes or pinholes in it. Also ran other images...lighter blues with a slight evidence of the pinholes. Have more ink arriving Saturday/tomorrow morning now to see if they have this problem fixed. I am truly hoping after some solvent and again a different batch of ink, this takes care of my issues!

 

[WYLDGFI]

Problem Resolved.

Was not material....printer....static...dust. It was definitively the Cyan Ink. Apparently some sort of separation of components in the chemistry caused the ink to fisheye and cause the problems. This was the 3rd Batch of ink sent to us. Finally...!!!