UCJV330 Pull Back Printing (Multi Layer printing)

[Goatshaver]

These look pretty good!
You could try using the RL Layers tab to adjust the thickness of the Clear Layer, and also the position if it is printing off to one side.
How did you find the cut accuracy on the Holographic?
I have been using FineCut to fill the crops with white ink instead of red, but this just adds another layer of difficulty to the file setup and you have to manually align for cut.
I hope they add this as a feature in RL7 to make it easier.

Cutting with the holographic was dead on, had no issues with reading the red filled mark boxes.
That would be a good option to use either white or the red fill on those. That's a good suggestion for them.

 

[Kemik]

Cutting with the holographic was dead on, had no issues with reading the red filled mark boxes.
That would be a good option to use either white or the red fill on those. That's a good suggestion for them.

I've had a few mishaps using the red, and the material is too expensive to have any mishaps!
Before I started using FineCut, I would cut out white squares of vinyl and stick them to the holo around the crops so I didn't have any chance of miss-cut.

 

[RonnyCrack]

Yeah, they are going nuts over raised stuff right now. lol These were 5 layers with gloss on the pullback. I can easily do 5 layers in 1 pass which is very subtle with the raised. I have yet to try the 2.5D prints on this yet.

Do you do much perforation on labels with raised prints?
Something I never thought of is the cutting can be really affected by the raised prints depending on the thickness. Totally different cutting this stuff than doing it on straight vinyl and laminate from my solvent printer.

Just cut deep on the perforation, I always have it go through the backing purposely. Have run tens of thousands of labels/stickers on the same blade no problem.

 

[RonnyCrack]

Been trying to experiment with layered printing and I wanted to try a print with white and clear. However it cannot print white and clear in the same pass so it has to retract the print (after printing white & 4 color) and then do the clear.

What's happening is the original print is fine then it pulls back to origin when it starts to print the vinyl gets bunched up in front of the rollers on the left hand side. (it lifts the middle sets of rollers for the pull back.) I can't seem to figure out why this is happening.

My only thought is when the print gets to a certain point there is tension on the media roll again and because it's only using the outer rollers one side my be slightly loose and the other side has tension to the roll and when it goes to advance the print it skews and gets bunched up. Not rally sure. I've tried it 3x and the same exact thing happens on the same side every time I've tried it.

Hopefully someone has done this and can lend me some tips on how to get this to work correctly.

Have you found any way to keep the rollers down while pull back printing? This is definitely the problem, and Roland machines allow you to enable all rollers for pull back... It's just so dumb to not give us an option? They claim it's so you don't get roller marks in your clear ink... WELL THEN WHY CAN IT ROLL BACK OVER CLEAR INK TO CUT???

 

[Goatshaver]

Have you found any way to keep the rollers down while pull back printing? This is definitely the problem, and Roland machines allow you to enable all rollers for pull back... It's just so dumb to not give us an option? They claim it's so you don't get roller marks in your clear ink... WELL THEN WHY CAN IT ROLL BACK OVER CLEAR INK TO CUT???

No. I'm hoping they make take a suggestions from users and implement it into a firmware update to make it an option.

 

[Goatshaver]

I found with fine detail, the registration would be prefect on the carriage side of the printer and be off about 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch on the otherside.

In the Quality tab, choose your clear layer and change the over print.
View attachment 172271

What's the highest raised print you've made?

I guess seeing how this works more. To do something really raised. It would have to be 2 passes and then overprinting with the clear to build it up. So I'd have to print my build, white and 4 Color layers first. Do mark detection and then run the clear with however many overprint passes I think I'll want to do.
Does that make sense? (I've been trying to get some training on this but not having much luck.)

 

[RonnyCrack]

What's the highest raised print you've made?

I guess seeing how this works more. To do something really raised. It would have to be 2 passes and then overprinting with the clear to build it up. So I'd have to print my build, white and 4 Color layers first. Do mark detection and then run the clear with however many overprint passes I think I'll want to do.
Does that make sense? (I've been trying to get some training on this but not having much luck.)

As far as I'm aware you can't detect marks for printing (at least in RL6 on the 300), just cutting. On single label test prints I've done 9 layers of clear no problem, I'd say at least a mm or so in height above one pass of color ink. It's mainly doing a full row of them or more that it becomes an issue for me.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, I would kill to be able to detect marks between layers...

 

[Kemik]

What's the highest raised print you've made?

I guess seeing how this works more. To do something really raised. It would have to be 2 passes and then overprinting with the clear to build it up. So I'd have to print my build, white and 4 Color layers first. Do mark detection and then run the clear with however many overprint passes I think I'll want to do.
Does that make sense? (I've been trying to get some training on this but not having much luck.)

I think this one had 5 layers of clear at various percentages.
Did this one awhile ago now, so I don't remember.

 

[Goatshaver]

As far as I'm aware you can't detect marks for printing (at least in RL6 on the 300), just cutting. On single label test prints I've done 9 layers of clear no problem, I'd say at least a mm or so in height above one pass of color ink. It's mainly doing a full row of them or more that it becomes an issue for me.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, I would kill to be able to detect marks between layers...

I think what the idea is that it sets a new origin point. It took me a few tries to figure out the offset for the clear layer after but it worked ok. I still like pullback printing as it's been dead on the few times I've tried it.

 

[Goatshaver]

I think this one had 5 layers of clear at various percentages.
Did this one awhile ago now, so I don't remember.

View attachment 172429
View attachment 172430

That sounds exactly what I'm trying to do.
If you don't mind sharing in a bit more detail how you set these up in Rasterlink I'd be very appreciative. I think I'm missing something when it comes to this. Probably something simple that eluding me or something I don't know of yet.

 

[Goatshaver]

I think this one had 5 layers of clear at various percentages.
Did this one awhile ago now, so I don't remember.

View attachment 172429
View attachment 172430

So I was experimenting this weekend with overprints. Did 2 layer, overprinted 2x, and 3 layer, overprinted 3x, now I see where you can get the height with the clear ink. But you have to compensate the 4 color layer for the overprints though. Unless there is a trick to only having it overprint certain layers and not others.

 

[RonnyCrack]

So I was experimenting this weekend with overprints. Did 2 layer, overprinted 2x, and 3 layer, overprinted 3x, now I see where you can get the height with the clear ink. But you have to compensate the 4 color layer for the overprints though. Unless there is a trick to only having it overprint certain layers and not others.

You can stack multiple clear layers (or copies of the same clear layer) and just check the "pull back after print" boxes on each. Then it only prints one color layer, and the series of clear layers.

There's probably a less roundabout way of doing it though. I'm using RL6

 

[Goatshaver]

You can stack multiple clear layers (or copies of the same clear layer) and just check the "pull back after print" boxes on each. Then it only prints one color layer, and the series of clear layers.

There's probably a less roundabout way of doing it though. I'm using RL6

Yeah that's what I've been playing with. I think some of these poeple may have gotten stuff that was done on a flatbed. Not actually having it in my hands its hard to tell how "raised" the prints are. I think it's making me question what I'm doing since I have nothing to compare it to.

 

[Kemik]

That sounds exactly what I'm trying to do.
If you don't mind sharing in a bit more detail how you set these up in Rasterlink I'd be very appreciative. I think I'm missing something when it comes to this. Probably something simple that eluding me or something I don't know of yet.

If there is a pull back before the clear layer, you can print the CMYK at 1 overprint, and the clear layer at multiple overprints.

The achieve different heights of clear, you need to set this up in Illustrator, make your clear layer as a seperate file 100% BLACK for the thickest clear parts, and lower percentages for other parts, you will need to play around with the percentages to achieve the height you are looking for. You can also do black to grey gradients that will give a cool effect.

When creating the clear plate in Rasterlink, don't use the Special Plate tab, instead highlight the clear layer, go to the properties tab, change "Job Attribute" from "Full color" to "Mono Color". Choose "Source Color BLACK", Check "Clear/Clear" and uncheck all other CMYKWW. Change the UV Mode to Glossy, or Matte if you want Matte. Then do your composition with a Pull back beffore clear.

 

[Goatshaver]

If there is a pull back before the clear layer, you can print the CMYK at 1 overprint, and the clear layer at multiple overprints.

The achieve different heights of clear, you need to set this up in Illustrator, make your clear layer as a seperate file 100% BLACK for the thickest clear parts, and lower percentages for other parts, you will need to play around with the percentages to achieve the height you are looking for. You can also do black to grey gradients that will give a cool effect.

When creating the clear plate in Rasterlink, don't use the Special Plate tab, instead highlight the clear layer, go to the properties tab, change "Job Attribute" from "Full color" to "Mono Color". Choose "Source Color BLACK", Check "Clear/Clear" and uncheck all other CMYKWW. Change the UV Mode to Glossy, or Matte if you want Matte. Then do your composition with a Pull back beffore clear.

Thanks for the added info. Sounds like I have to experiment more. My Mimaki contact hasn't gotten back to me on help with raised printing yet. Also have tried the 2.5D printing but it hasn't worked, not sure if it's buggy or I'm missing something on it yet since I have yet to find someone who has used the 2.5D printing on the UCJV330.

I got these samples from another printer and they are really raised up a lot. (More than I can get right now.) I believe these were done on a Roland UV machine. The clear also feels rounded and no sharp edges. (Might be the software Roland uses to do raised prints.) For me to get this I think I'd have to do 5 layers with 2x overprint or do a configuration with pullback printing. I can't imagine doing 1000 stickers like that though but I guess if people want it they'll have to pay a premium for them.

 

[Kemik]

Sounds like I have to experiment more. My mimaki contact hasn't gotten back to me on help with raised printing yet.

I got these samples from another printer and they are really raised up a lot. (More than I can get right now.) I believe these were done on a Roland UV machine. The clear also feels rounded and no sharp edges. (Might be the software Roland uses to do raised prints.) For me to get this I think I'd have to do 5 layers with 2x overprint or do a configuration with pullback printing. I can't imagine doing 1000 stickers like that though but I guess if people want it they'll have to pay a premium for them.

Yeah, the more overprints you do, the longer it will take. We did charge quite a lot more for the raised print and they were quite happy to pay it. Although when they came back for a 2nd order and we were busy with other jobs, they were not happy when we couldn't rush their order, and they decided to go somewhere else!

The example I showed was 1 layer of CMYK at 1 overprint, pull back for 1 layer of clear (Mono Plate) with (I think) 5 overprints.

 

[Goatshaver]

So as I've been trying lots of things on this and pull back was working ok with the material I was using. The backing material was fairly slippery compared to the Orajet 4mil I was trying which has rougher backer. The orajet material bunched right up in front of the rollers as soon as the middle 4 were lifted and the media moved back and forth. So I thought maybe using the take up reel would help put tension on it and keep it flat. Well the take up doesn't stay active during the pull back printing (2 pass) like it does with 1 pass prints. It would put tension when it pre-fed the media and then turn off and only become active after the first pass was done and then when it started the 2nd pass it turned off. So my guess is that they don't have the take up active for pull back printing for some engineering reason.

So it seems the best way for me to achieve the higher levels would be to print a 4 Color + white build underneath (1 pass) and then if they want clear or a higher build. Run a 2nd pass with matte or gloss clear by detecting the crop mark after the first pass and then printing the clear from that origin point.

 

[Kemik]

So as I've been trying lots of things on this and pull back was working ok with the material I was using. The backing material was fairly slippery compared to the Orajet 4mil I was trying which has rougher backer. The orajet material bunched right up in front of the rollers as soon as the middle 4 were lifted and the media moved back and forth. So I thought maybe using the take up reel would help put tension on it and keep it flat. Well the take up doesn't stay active during the pull back printing (2 pass) like it does with 1 pass prints. It would put tension when it pre-fed the media and then turn off and only become active after the first pass was done and then when it started the 2nd pass it turned off. So my guess is that they don't have the take up active for pull back printing for some engineering reason.

So it seems the best way for me to achieve the higher levels would be to print a 4 Color + white build underneath (1 pass) and then if they want clear or a higher build. Run a 2nd pass with matte or gloss clear by detecting the crop mark after the first pass and then printing the clear from that origin point.

I've never tried to print a 2nd pass by using the crop marks, so I don't know how well that works.
One thing I know other people will do for the roll back on shorter prints is to take a core and cut a slit in it length wise and insert/pinch the end of the material inside the slit to add some weight to the material. In theory this should help with the bunching up, but I have never done this personally..

For stickers I use General Formulations GF-214/216, it's cheap and I have no print issues or bunching up in the machine. It's probably not ideal for automotive or anything long term, but I mostly print product labels/stickers.

 

[Goatshaver]

I've never tried to print a 2nd pass by using the crop marks, so I don't know how well that works.
One thing I know other people will do for the roll back on shorter prints is to take a core and cut a slit in it length wise and insert/pinch the end of the material inside the slit to add some weight to the material. In theory this should help with the bunching up, but I have never done this personally..

For stickers I use General Formulations GF-214/216, it's cheap and I have no print issues or bunching up in the machine. It's probably not ideal for automotive or anything long term, but I mostly print product labels/stickers.

I'll have to keep experimenting. I was using Orajet 3164 (4mil) I have some 6mil coming today for stickers that I'm going to try.
Guess it's just finding a happy medium and setting customer expectations on this sort really high raised printing.

I've had some success just running tests with the reading crop mark and running a second pass. Just have to figure out the scan and feed values for the clear position, which takes some testing. I'm going to try more than just a couple small prints to see how it lines up across the width of the whole sheet and a little bit of length.

 

[Goatshaver]

Just did 4 sheets of these 8up labels. Printed 1st pass 600x1200, 4 color and then scanned the cut marks. Reset my scan width and positioned the gloss files (without cut marks) in the same scan offset as the 4 color and then up in the feed .1875" and let it print. The gloss is slightly off but I noticed in my file it's off slightly the same on these thin lines. (the lines in this are only about 1pt in size so the details are pretty small.) Seems to work pretty decent without having to worry about the middle pinch rollers.