Pinch roller marks on vinyl surface

Hi guys

I'm using HP L360 and Avery 3023 monomer vinyl. I'm having a problem with solid colors especially with grey solids which are made from all 4 CMYK colors.

I'm aware that there are some difficulties with colors like green, purple, brown, orange. I have spent today all day playing around with different settings.

I would like to ask you for your advice how to get rid of pinch roller traces on print. It's not visible on all color. Just on some.

I tried increasing passes to 10, color ink to 120% and that helped on green and purple. On gray's I tried lowering also input tension to 10 and I tried also 500ms with InterPass-Delay. And on last I tried to increase optimizer to 20" and lowered also vacuum from 35mm/H2O to 20mm/H2O.

I think that colors are printed fine only pinch roller can be visible on media substrate. But I need to solve this on low cost vinyl like monomer / calandered vinyl.

Any suggestion?

Attachments

   IMG_0648.JPG

   IMG_0649.JPG

   IMG_0652.JPG

   IMG_0655.JPG

   IMG_0654.JPG

Hello @SasoSan

After review the pictures attached I can see that you are suffering plasticizer migration on your banner substrate. Plasticizer shows up as randomly non-uniform areas with “coalescence like” graininess and increases the visibility of pinchwheel marks. Find below some recommendations:

- The only way to remove plasticizer is to “wash it out” with isopropyl alcohol. This is not practical for printing but can be used as a diagnostic tool: by washing only part of the substrate the defects can be made appear (not washed areas) and disappear (washed areas).

- Change printing material or, at least, the production batch of the material used (preferred the ones that have not been stored for a long time).

- In some cases, increasing heater temperature and number of passes can reduce the effect.

I also recommend to watch What is Plasticizer? video. This video will give you a dipper inside of this issue.

Please keep me informed

Was this helpful?Yes0 No0

How can we improve it?

SubmitCancel

Thank you Sonia for your answer.

I will give a try to your proposal and in next days I will get back if I managed to

solve my issue and how I have solved it.

Was this helpful?Yes0 No0

How can we improve it?

SubmitCancel

To add to the conversation...

the griper marks arent always due to plasticizers... they could also be actual impressions made by the gripper rollers because the thickness ( and the softness) of the vinyl is too much for a latex printer. i had the same thing happen with clear cling i was using until i switched brands.

the grey you are trying to achieve can be done, you just have to up the passes. 8-10 pass was always my generic pass mode for my prints... i found that 6 pass was far too low quality for my tastes... even with the new 570. i made a "solids" profile for my problem colours (orange, grey) that was 12 pass, that always did the trick... but for added security, i would place 1" rainbows (CMYK strips) down each side of the print to ensure that at every pass each printhead was firing... that would eliminate the colour "choking" you seem to be experiencing.

best of luck!

Was this helpful?Yes0 No0

How can we improve it?

SubmitCancel

Hi

It was defective media. I took different vinyl which was deliveried in close past and problem dissapeared.

Also I found some useful information in this video. My problem is solved with better quality material from Avery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb1d89PF22g&list=PLmqp1TCU\_XvLLfhUMcu-9f3md5cI79x1y&index=23

Thank you for your help

Was this helpful?Yes0 No0

How can we improve it?

SubmitCancel