Re: Head Crashes with banners

can anyone please lend a hand on this one. I am using 18 oz double sided banner material and i have had i crash so many times just trying to get these 65 banner done. Any ideas would be helpful. Latex 360 flexi cloud perpetual,

Solved! Go to Solution.

I had this problem very badly at the beginning. It really doesn't matter what side it is, it's going to stick to the metal plate where the material feeds out of, bunch up, and head crash--even if it's on the take-up reel. Use the felt pieces that came with the printer so that when you're printing, the material has a much smoother, and cooler, ride. Also, use some painters tape to tape them down where they clip in to hold them on tight.

This issue is basically related to the temperatures applied to cure the ink. There are several tips that could solve/reduce this problem.

The following is a complete list of tips and tricks that can be used to prevent this issue:

1. Decrease curing temperature: main recommendation.

2. Load substrate into the Take-Up Reel. This helps to stretch the substrate and can help avoid it
becoming stuck on the output platen.

3. Decrease the Inter-Swath Delay if necessary, to avoid the media being under the curing module
for a long time.

4. Reduce the ink level. Follow this recommendation if the ink is not properly cured due to
temperature reduction.

5. In the event a single job needs to be sent and it is not possible to load the Take-Up Reel for it,
leave the leading edge hanging in the front of the curing module. The transition zone between print platen and output platen is critical to this issue; therefore, it is better to avoid passing the
leading edge by this zone when printing.

Thanks for the info about the felt pieces. I had no idea what they were for, the installer didn't really explain it to me.

Just tried these for the first time, and as the print was finishing and the material was retracted by the printer, it also grabbed one of them and pulled it back under the pinch rollers beneath the banner. Then the carriage tried to move over it and caused a media crash, requiring a full shutdown and restart. Way to fail again HP.

HP-MarcM wrote:

Hi Mike-Asheville,

First of all, I will like to welcome you to the HP Latex Community.

I’ve checked the media you’re using (as you said in this other post), and I’ve been not able to find it in the HP Media Solutions Locator, I’m sorry, but since has not been tested by HP I can’t recommend any kind of presets. If you’re interested, you can find a bunch of banners, whit their custom profile tested by HP in the HP Media Solutions Locator.

As I’ve already told to Trenteallen, the media crashing is probably because of a high curing temperature. If you haven’t, I will like to encourage you to follow the recommendations above, if they do not work I’m afraid you’ll have to contact your support source in order to check if your printer is working fine.

About the fact that some of the media gets stuck to the output platen, I will like to ask you to install the Output Platen Protector, which is part of the Service Kit. This will help you to solve this inconvenient. You’ll find the instructions about how to install the Output Platen Protection with it.

Please let me know if this helped you.

The Ultraflex is deffinately on that HP Media Solutions list, it's listed under Ultraflex Pole Banner Pro 18oz. However, when I expand the topic and click on the link for "Suggested Media Settings and Media Presets" and scroll down to the Latex 360 section, there are no suggestions. So what this tells me is that HP is marketing this printer as able to print double sided banners, but has no suggested settings, substrates, or solutions for this application. This printer has been on the market for over a year now, and still there are no solutions to the double sided banner issues that many of us customers seem to be having. So really, the Latex 360 only prints double sided banners in theory, which would be fine except for the fact that my customers don't like to pay for theoretical banners. As I said in the previous post, the felt platten protectors don't work. I installed them per the instructions, and they just kind of sit there, as if they were some kind of half way stop gap cobbled together after the fact when the designers of this printer realized the problem. But they don't work, they get caught beneath the banner as it moves backward during the end of a job after drying and get stuck beneath the pinch rollers. Nice try, but no dice. And I'm still stuck printing double sided banners as two faces back to back, which looks terrible.

Hi again Mike,

You’re right, the Ultraflex Pole Banner Pro 18oz is in the HP Media Solution Locator, but is not available for the HP Latex 300 Series. The reason why is in the 200 and not for the 300 is because the media certification program is an open process that is based on the initiative of the media vendors. They decide which medias from their portfolio are going to be tested in each printers.

Nonetheless, you can find other double-sided banners that have been certified by other brands such as Herculite Bantex, the 18oz 2S and the 13oz 2S Curl Free. You can access to their certified profile from the front panel of you HP Latex printer if it is connected to the network (substrate library à Online search à Herculite Bantex) or thru the HP Media Solutions Locator with the following selection: (Printing Solutions à HP Latex / Device Model à HP Latex 360 /Application à Double-sided /Media Type à Banner /Grade à Blockout PVC)

We’ve also find other users that nowadays are printing double-sided banners with some Ultraflex media, but we didn’t had the opportunity to print with them: Ultraflex DSS 12 and 14, Ultraflex 18 LTX and Ultraflex 15oz BO.

Referring to the covers, there are two versions of them. The old ones (all black) do not work properly with banner, while the new ones (half white and half black) were specially intended to be used with banners. Could you please let me know which of the two are you using? If you are using the old ones, I will recommend you to get in contact your service provider to get one of the new ones.

Hope this medias will help you printing double-sided banners with you HP Latex printer.

The felt platen protectors I have are white on the bottom and black felt on the face, but there is no adhesive or anything to hold it in place on the platen besides the little plastic tabs, which don't really hold it, they just hang there. I will try the Herculite Bantexfor double sided banners, thanks for the help.

Yes, the 18 oz. is a nightmare, and I've printed hundreds of pole banners on this machine.

Hi Mike,

Would you please let me know if you get better results with the medias i've recommended?

Also, I went to the lab and i've found one of the new platen covers. I've made a picture in order to make sure you have the correct one. As you can see they are half white half black:

i expect news from you.

That deffinately doesn't look like the ones I have. When we get the new material in I'll let you know how it works. Thanks for the help.

I just wanted to chime in here. We never had the problem with head crashes on our 260. We use to print 6 rolls of 15oz Ultraflex / double-sided banners every month on our 260. When we bought the 360 we immediately had problems. It became very obvious to me that the problem was from a redesign that was a cost cutting measure. If you will look at the picture attached to this post you will see that the 260 has a roller at the end of the out feed.

The roller keeps the material from touching the platen. It also helps keep the material in a flatter position when going through the machine.

We also print a lot of 10pt C2S board stock. We can only print the board stock on the 260. Again, we cannot print 10pt on the 360 because the angle the paper has to make to get back to the take up roller is too steep of an angle and the paper bows up causing the head to crash. Even when we use the material hold downs the paper will bow in the middle enough the heads scrape the paper. Luckily we have enough engineering skills at our shop that we have been able to build attachments that let the 360 print like our 260.

We built a free standing roller similar to the 260 and we created an "air blade" (it is a row of fans that triple the force of air going against the material before getting to the take up roller. With these options we can run heavier ink coverage when we want to and fewer passes when we need to. Time is money.

Hi Printboy,

Thanks for your feedback and analysis. It's nice to know that there are other workaround to print double-sided banners aside from the one purposed by us.

It's too bad we have to come up with workarounds for a $25-$30K machine. We bought the HP 370 in 2/2016. I have noticed many design flaws. Problems printing banner is the biggest.

Hi,Can anyone help me out with this one

I am using Latex 360 and i am getting color issue as shown in the attached file.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Note: this is only with the vinyl substrate

Hi Abdul64,

I will recommend you to try the following:

- clean the printheads and print the "Check plot".

- You can try to turn the plot 90 degrees

- You can also try to change the affected printheads.

if none of this works I'll strongly recommend you to contact your support source.

Hope this helps.

This thread was helpful, i have the Latex 315 and I agree that it sucks paying $25k for a machine that has such exact requirements for material properties and so many attachments you need to use to workaround the design flaws. Unfortunately the 315 doesn't come with the output platten protector but I will try adding an external roller to create a gap between the media and output platten, thanks for the advice --- .