UV ink printing on corregated yard sign material

[Almengel65]

I have a Mimaki JFX200 flatbed printer that uses UV ink. I'm having some trouble getting it to bond well printing on corrugated material like the material used for yard signs. I have 2 primers from Nazdar that I've tried that work great for most everything else, except it doesn't help bond to this corrugated material that great. It bonds OK but id like to get it better. Is there any other primers anyone could suggest?

Any help is greatly appreciated, Thank you.

 

[StarSign]

I don't run a Mimaki but I do print on corex all day long with my flatbed and don't have a adhesion issue. We don't use any type of primer. Check your lamp settings.......

 

[petepaz]

we have a roland uv and it prints pretty good on coroplast but it will still come off if you get agressive with it. i know when we silk screen they have to use special inks that bite in to the plastic so the ink adheres better. it's a tough product to print on because the ink just sits on the surface of the material. have you tried wiping the sheets down with alcohol first (make sure they are clean)?

 

[Andy D]

Coro is the problem child for many of the newer inks, I had the same issue, it would flake off when we cut it to size...
Then I changed inks from Agfa's generation 1 inks to their generation 5 inks..
You may want to contact Mimaki and see if they have a newer & improved ink you could switch to.

Assuming your main issues are when you cut your coro, one work around is don't do full bleeds,
try and make sure you have a white or light color border in your designs.

Another work around is print your coro in two passes, meaning do the whole print at 20% density
and reprint it at 80%, the ink that is in contact with the coro will have a stronger bond that way.

 

[klmiller611]

I agree with Andy, I have the same problem with flaking edges on cut. Agfa told me to crank the lamps up to high and use a specific brand of coro. It helped some, but not enough. Now I try to only do things that do not involve heavy ink coverage on the cut edges. In addition, I try to have time to let it cure out overnight at least, but we all know how the best laid plans go.

Ken Miller

 

[Andy D]

I agree with Andy, I have the same problem with flaking edges on cut. Agfa told me to crank the lamps up to high and use a specific brand of coro. It helped some, but not enough. Now I try to only do things that do not involve heavy ink coverage on the cut edges. In addition, I try to have time to let it cure out overnight at least, but we all know how the best laid plans go.

Ken Miller

What Inks do you use?

 

[Ditchmiester]

I have a Mimaki JFX200 flatbed printer that uses UV ink. I'm having some trouble getting it to bond well printing on corrugated material like the material used for yard signs. I have 2 primers from Nazdar that I've tried that work great for most everything else, except it doesn't help bond to this corrugated material that great. It bonds OK but id like to get it better. Is there any other primers anyone could suggest?

Any help is greatly appreciated, Thank you.

We have a smaller Mimaki, What series ink are you running? We have the S100 Ink set with White and Primer and any time i need to print to a yard sign I wipe it down with 3M Primer 94 First. Seems to work pretty good for us. Might want to give it a try.

 

[klmiller611]

What Inks do you use?

We have an Mv from 2008. I've not had any contact with Agfa in at least three years, so I know nothing about any other ink set. Would the Gen 5 run in my machine? Don't know.

The varnish was a complete waste, maybe used it twice, and that was mostly experimental.

Ken

 

[ChrisN]

We have an Mv from 2008. I've not had any contact with Agfa in at least three years, so I know nothing about any other ink set. Would the Gen 5 run in my machine? Don't know.

The varnish was a complete waste, maybe used it twice, and that was mostly experimental.

Ken

FWIW, they told us the G5 inks wouldn't work in our M4f, which has the same KM512 heads as the Mv. Our adhesion was so bad, that the black background on some yard signs totally flaked off after about 2 months of weekend use only.

 

[Andy D]

FWIW, they told us the G5 inks wouldn't work in our M4f, which has the same KM512 heads as the Mv. Our adhesion was so bad, that the black background on some yard signs totally flaked off after about 2 months of weekend use only.

They also have a G4 ink series, that is said to adhere as well as the G5, it's mostly sold in Europe but
there are people in the USA using it.. I wonder if you could run that..and I'm pretty sure there is a G2 and G3,
I have no idea the pros- or -cons of them, but you may want to look into it.
Also. assuming you're outside your warranty, I would call around to the 3rd party inks like Nazdar and Fuji and
see if they have anything, we have used both of them in the past and they both switched us at no cost.

 

[ChrisN]

They also have a G4 ink series, that is said to adhere as well as the G5, it's mostly sold in Europe but
there are people in the USA using it.. I wonder if you could run that..and I'm pretty sure there is a G2 and G3,
I have no idea the pros- or -cons of them, but you may want to look into it.
Also. assuming you're outside your warranty, I would call around to the 3rd party inks like Nazdar and Fuji and
see if they have anything, we have used both of them in the past and they both switched us at no cost.

I think they came out with the G2 inks soon after we got our printer, but we never switched to them because the gamut was less. I would have researched 3rd party inks, but soon after I started, we began talking about getting a new printer. We ended up getting a CET Q5, and their ink adheres to coroplast a lot better than the Agfa G1 inks.

 

[Andy D]

I think they came out with the G2 inks soon after we got our printer, but we never switched to them because the gamut was less. I would have researched 3rd party inks, but soon after I started, we began talking about getting a new printer. We ended up getting a CET Q5, and their ink adheres to coroplast a lot better than the Agfa G1 inks.

The Gamut is less than G1 on all of them, including G5... but damn if I can tell the difference.
How do you like the CET Q5?

 

[greysquirrel]

Is this printer new? I thought ink flaking off corrugated was a thing of the past...If I had to pre-wipe every sheet of corogated before printing, I think I'd go old school and mount adhesive vinyl...

on HP its correctable through lamp settings...allowing the ink to settle before curing....shuttered trailing lamp, print delay...

I would have reseller onsite fixing...

 

[Andy D]

Is this printer new? I thought ink flaking off corrugated was a thing of the past...If I had to pre-wipe every sheet of corogated before printing, I think I'd go old school and mount adhesive vinyl...

on HP its correctable through lamp settings...allowing the ink to settle before curing....shuttered trailing lamp, print delay...

I would have reseller onsite fixing...

From what I understand, most of the original UV flatbeds didn't have issues with coroplast, I have a 10yo Jeti
that the only thing I use it for is coroplast because you can scrape the ink as hard as you want with a key and it won't damage it... it has 50 picoliter heads.
When the newer generation UV printers came out with print heads that were less than 15 picoliter, they had to change
their ink formula and one of the negative side effects was poor adhesion to coro and other substrates... most UV manufacturers
have updated their ink to fix this problem, unfortunately, their updated ink require updated print heads... so many of their
clients with 3-5 year old printers are screwed.

 

[Nate1n22]

ZE 720 from Fuji is specifically designed for coroplast. Smells terrible though. Our Inca Onset S40 won't stick to coro.

 

[Signs Express]

I have a Mimaki JFX200 flatbed printer that uses UV ink. I'm having some trouble getting it to bond well printing on corrugated material like the material used for yard signs. I have 2 primers from Nazdar that I've tried that work great for most everything else, except it doesn't help bond to this corrugated material that great. It bonds OK but id like to get it better. Is there any other primers anyone could suggest?

Any help is greatly appreciated, Thank you.

We've got the JFX200 and are running the LUS-150 ink set. We have no initial adhesion issues with the cheap corrugated plastic. Were generally seeing about a year of durability on corrugated plastic.... a couple months less than that if its south facing.

We clean each sheet with 90% isopropyl alcohol prior to printing. If your having to apply primer or adhesion promoter, your going to be killing your efficiency and margins.