White spots appearing in Avery backlit material

[mikeinpdx]

An installer applied some Avery MPI 2050 backlit prints to panels and the customer is seeing white spots starting to show through, especially noticable where the black print is. Any ideas what could be happening here? You can see some spots on the bottom right of the sign and some starting in the blue lettering.

The light source isn't close and the installer said it's not even hot to the touch.

These weren't laminated ( interior use only ). One odd thing the installer did was use RapidTac and I'm wondering if that could have been the issue. Printed on a Roland ecosolvent printer.

 

[Gino]

Regardless of whose media you used, it looks like contamination more than anything else. Coulda been any brand up there. Might've happened before printing or something someone got their greasy hands, then on the print afterwards during packing up or installing. Could be lotsa things.

 

[mikeinpdx]

Regardless of whose media you used, it looks like contamination more than anything else. Coulda been any brand up there. Might've happened before printing or something someone got their greasy hands, then on the print afterwards during packing up or installing. Could be lotsa things.

I should clarify - these went on fine, no spotting. Over time, white spots started to appear, as you can see in the lower right

 

[MikePro]

mishandling of media before print. "hands-down" quality control issue.
ecosolvent printers are designed to print on treated CLEAN media. Not a chunk of vinyl that's been man-handled by grubby fingers. I burn the first <foot of media from my roll for this very reason, because it is safe to assume that any exposed vinyl on a roll is contaminated due to loading/unloading/dust/etc. that...and because I also like a little margin of scrap media on the front/back of my print, for lamination purposes.

also, what do you expect? no lamination = just don't care anyways, so what does it matter? You could have a perfect fabrication/install of an unlaminated graphic, but if someone tries to clean it once ...its trash. (which I guess could be another cause of this, reclassifying my bold statements as "inferior product".)

 

[mikeinpdx]

mishandling of media before print. "hands-down" quality control issue.
ecosolvent printers are designed to print on treated CLEAN media. Not a chunk of vinyl that's been man-handled by grubby fingers. I burn the first foot of media from my roll for this very reason, because it is safe to assume that any exposed vinyl on a roll is contaminated due to loading/unloading/dust/etc. that...and because I also like a little margin of scrap media on the front/back of my print, for lamination purposes.

doubtful this blemish appeared over time, but even if it did then this would still be the cause.
This is definitely an error that was either unnoticed, or declared "looks fine to me" during production, and then stood-out like a soreTHUMB once illuminated.

also, what do you expect? no lamination = you just don't care anyways, so what does it matter? Could have a perfect fabrication/install of an unlaminated graphic, but if someone tries to clean it once ...its trash.

Like I said, spots appeared over the course of several weeks, they weren't visible when applied. So I'm not sure about it being a handing issue, since I would expect that to show up right away.

Printed & unlaminated Avery 2050 can be wiped down with a damp cloth with zero issues, so for interior use it's been fine.

 

[MikePro]

assuming whomever is cleaning the product, is as gentle as the unlaminated print requires.