Need Help Is anybody flatbed printing with UV lamps turned OFF; then, doing the UV cure as a separate step?

[Tom Dalton]

Is anybody flatbed printing with UV lamps turned OFF; then, doing the UV cure as a separate step? They have the UV cure machines that screen printers use. They typically have a Conveyor belt that takes the wet print under the UV dryer to cure the ink.

I'm considering this as a way to do lots of prints on Hight Intensity reflective material. Print the material on a digital flatbed printer, but pick the option to turn lamps off (ours has that feature). Then, run those prints under a UV dryer. This process would get us around known issues printing on reflective where the UV light bounces up and cures ink coming out of the heads.

-Tom

 

[Solventinkjet]

Can't help with your question but on all of the flatbeds I have worked on, usually you can print on reflective as long as the head height is set properly. For most printers that means no higher from the material than about 2mm. If you are printing higher than that, that could be what causes the ink to cure in the head.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

We print on mirrors weekly for one particular client... never had ink cure on a head in 5+ years.
If this is actually happening and not just fearmongering, it would be rather poor printer design.
Our heads are set by default to be 1.4mm above the substrate, further reinforcing VanderJ's point.

 

[TimToad]

Our printer doesn't let us manually adjust the head height and its default is 1mm so we place a piece of either 1mm or 2mm PVC over our reflective as a way to fool the printhead height sensor.

 

[Christian @ Visual Graphx]

No issues here printing on a FB750 with EGP, Type 4 or Type 11 reflectives.

 

[Tom Dalton]

Our heads are too expensive to experiment... so, I guess I just don't want to test the theory. I heard a warning about it on our previous flatbed and just kept that on my list of things not to do.

Previous machine - Ricoh gen 5 heads $2k to $5k depending on where you source them from
Current machine - Kyocera heads (2,656 nozzles per head) $10k+ depending on where you source them from

I asked the manufacturer (CET color). They say "yes, you can print on reflective ... but, i wouldn't recommend it". What ever that means.

 

[aparat]

Our heads are too expensive to experiment... so, I guess I just don't want to test the theory. I heard a warning about it on our previous flatbed and just kept that on my list of things not to do.

Previous machine - Ricoh gen 5 heads $2k to $5k depending on where you source them from
Current machine - Kyocera heads (2,656 nozzles per head) $10k+ depending on where you source them from

I asked the manufacturer (CET color). They say "yes, you can print on reflective ... but, i wouldn't recommend it". What ever that means.

Can you tell the difference in quality, maintenance etc betwen this two heads (kyocera and gen5) - because you had both and as i understand in simmilar machines - so you can very good compare the heads.. pros / cons would be great.

 

[Gino]

How would you pick up a full bleed anything ?? It's gonna smear without very well planned out steps taken. We pretty much have our heads set to 1.7 for almost all materials. We can alter that, but that's the honey spot for nearly every substrate. No problem with mirrors, reflective or glass.

 

[johnnysigns]

The quality without curing will be a mess. I know this from printing with the UV system off by accident on our press. The ink turns into a pool of yuck without the curing passes.

 

[Troy Lesher]

Is anybody flatbed printing with UV lamps turned OFF; then, doing the UV cure as a separate step? They have the UV cure machines that screen printers use. They typically have a Conveyor belt that takes the wet print under the UV dryer to cure the ink.

I'm considering this as a way to do lots of prints on Hight Intensity reflective material. Print the material on a digital flatbed printer, but pick the option to turn lamps off (ours has that feature). Then, run those prints under a UV dryer. This process would get us around known issues printing on reflective where the UV light bounces up and cures ink coming out of the heads.

-Tom

just because its not firing ink, doesn't mean that the reflection wont hit the ink suspended in the nozzles

 

[petepaz]

what does the artwork look like? just have it silk screened (that's basically what you just described) but we have a roland LEJ and we have been printing on chrome material for years with no issues.