Holographic Vinyl Curling Upwards

[NITOS]

Does anyone know how to fix this? We're printing with an Epson S80600, and Laminating with 210G, on a GFP 563TH.

The edges arent curling so the vinyl isnt failing. It's more like the entire sticker/slap itself is curling upwards.
This is only happening to our holographic vinyl, this doesnt happen to our 3m reflective vinyl, or Oracal 3651 vinyl.

When laminating a roll, we crank up the vinyl tension as hard as it can, almost to a point where it slows down the motor a bit.
(Our reasoning for doing this is because if the laminate is too tight, it curls upwards. So if we tighten the f*ck out of the bottom vinyl, it will curl downwards, which would be better than upwards.*)

And for the laminate, we give it little to no tension.
Just enough to keep the laminate from sliding left to right causing wrinkles.
For the rollers we bring it all the way down then add 3 inches extra in rotation.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

What brand is the material?
R-Tape/Nekoosa bulletin says you shouldn't cut within 1/4in of the printed area as the solvents will 'pull' on the material and cause it to curl.
The only way we ever got it working properly was to print with a UV machine and not use the solvent at all.
We even printed, outgassed for ~6 weeks then laminated with cast and it still curled...

 

[NITOS]

What brand is the material?
R-Tape/Nekoosa bulletin says you shouldn't cut within 1/4in of the printed area as the solvents will 'pull' on the material and cause it to curl.
The only way we ever got it working properly was to print with a UV machine and not use the solvent at all.
We even printed, outgassed for ~6 weeks then laminated with cast and it still curled...

It's actually our own formulated vinyl. Which is why we're determined to find a solution because we invested in way too many rolls..

I know a few competitors that don't have a curling factors with their materials and they're also using Eco Solvent printers, so there must be something we're missing.

 

[Driftbunnydecals]

Try using 215g instead that’s what I use on all my holographic

 

[NITOS]

Try using 215g instead that’s what I use on all my holographic

I'll definitely give it a try! I appreciate the feedback.

 

[InkHead]

I think Griff network Holo and other specialty materials have the same issue. Their stuff is pretty thin to. How many miles is your holographic? How soon are you seeing the curl after laminating?

 

[NITOS]

I think Griff network Holo and other specialty materials have the same issue. Their stuff is pretty thin to. How many miles is your holographic? How soon are you seeing the curl after laminating?

When we first got into printing Holographic we also used Griff Network. It eats up the material causing the edge curling. Terrible stuff. It works if you print on clear then mount it onto the holographic though.

Not sure what you mean by miles, but in terms of specs of the material, it's 4mil thick, with a 160g liner paper. If it turns out to be a material issue we could easily fix it with our next manufactured batch.

They look good when it gets released to the customer, at that point we cant tell when it starts to curl. But for the photo referenced above I'd say about a week or two before they showed us the problems.

 

[InkHead]

Spell check on my phone got me. It was supposed to be mils, not miles.

Do you know if your liner is polycoated? I'm wondering if the paper liner is drying out and losing it's moisture properties from the heat even after ink has been applied.

Have you tried creating your own profile for your material. Maybe too much ink saturation and when the solvents evaporate the ink shrinks/pulls back

 

[billram570]

If the material is thin, another thing you can do is cut back your white ink coverage some. If you lay down white and cmyk in areas, that’s a lot of solvent and it will bite way too much into the material and make it do some weird things. Another thing you can do which kinda sucks is slow down the printer run uni or and increase your passes…gives the solvent a little more time to evaporate .