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What heat settings do you run for retractable banner material and vinyl

gabagoo

gabagoo

New Member
I am not sure why I always feel that I am supposed to run heat settings at 45c pre heat and 40 c print. I use it basically on all vinyls and scrim banner and seems to work. Where I seem to find an issue is on Grimco's Sihl banner material and other similar types of retractable banner materials.
If I have gradients or full coverage of lighter colours I get what I thought was ink starvation, but I think it is really too much heat flashing the ink. I ran a banner yesterday and not until the last 1/4 of the print where the colour was getting to a pinky orange gradient that I noticed this streaking effect basically ruining the print. I decided to print at 35 - 30 and it printed fine....not sure what issues can come from lower heat settings on that material, but I have no choice at this point. Anyone out there give me a lesson on heat? I need a refresher.
 
S

SignMeUpGraphics

Super Active Member
We run 30 pre/40 platen/50 dryer on our Epson on virtually all materials and it works nicely.

From another site:
  • Heat settings. Solvent and eco-solvent printers have heaters that perform a variety of functions in the printing process. Using the right heater setting is critical in reproducing the image. It also affects the curing of the ink system. Set too low and the dot grows. With dot gain the printed image can darken. And at the lower heat setting the solvent won’t sufficiently cure. This residual solvent can affect the performance of the vinyl film and its adhesive system. On the other hand, if the heat setting is too high, the dot doesn’t sufficiently grow and the print is too light. More importantly, when the solvent flashes off too fast the ink also doesn’t sufficiently anchor to the film.
 
gabagoo

gabagoo

New Member
dot gain has to be the issue...... I am not sure if we can increase or decrease dot gain values in the rip software...going to look around. Thank you for your input
 
S

SignMeUpGraphics

Super Active Member
I think it's more a physical property of the inks at certain temperatures rather than software setting.
The new Oce Colorado apparently has a platen cooler to stop the new gel ink formulation from expanding too quickly (excess dot gain).
 
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