Issues With Courtwrap on HP700W- Help Please!

[PinkPrintingPixie]

Good morning everyone,

We ordered this new material for a project (Courtwrap), and it says it's Latex compatible, but there is absolutely no information on profiles, starting temps, pass number or anything. I was hoping someone on here either had experience with this material or similar.

It's a polypropylene based adhesive repositionable film, 3mil with a plastic 5mil liner. Very thin, VERY staticky.

Tried running it at 194 F and 6 Passes and it was simultaneously not curing while also sticking to my cure bar/ popping up near the platen (because of sticking in the cure bar) as well as curling pretty badly. After it came off the printer after curing, the whole print was nice and fully cured, but the top half was smeared to hell sometime between printing (it was fine) and feeding for the final cure passes (it was hitting that damn cure bar)

I've devised part of my solution is "low and slow", but not a damn soul will tell me where to start. 150F? 170F? Should I up the interpass delay?

I have extensive experience working with HP Latexes but nothing we printed on was specialty material that needed custom profiling so I'm frustrated and a bit lost. They only ordered 100ft and I need 60 for this job. I'd need to web it up to help with feeding flat so any "testing" I do without a good starting point is just wasting material I need. My old job ALWAYS printed polypropylene on our Z series inkjets so this is a new zone.

Thanks in advance for anyone who can direct me.

 

[balstestrat]

Always attach it to the take-up before hitting print and set the mode to "continuous tension" (called something like that).
And maybe up the tension a little bit.

If it looks good after that then it's fine.

 

[PinkPrintingPixie]

Always attach it to the take-up before hitting print and set the mode to "continuous tension" (called something like that).
And maybe up the tension a little bit.

If it looks good after that then it's fine.

Thank you! I still feel like I need to reduce temps and up the passes because it was curling BADLY coming off the machine (and it's a small self roll on my table a day later) but I think the tension bar may help with a lot of the sticking at least. Just frustrating no one will/ can give me what their idea of a "lower temperature" is. Hard to tell if they mean reduce it 3 degrees or 20 degrees - big difference!

 

[Splash0321]

Thank you! I still feel like I need to reduce temps and up the passes because it was curling BADLY coming off the machine (and it's a small self roll on my table a day later) but I think the tension bar may help with a lot of the sticking at least. Just frustrating no one will/ can give me what their idea of a "lower temperature" is. Hard to tell if they mean reduce it 3 degrees or 20 degrees - big difference!

I’ll second what balstestrat said. There are some substrates that I have to use the Takeup reel for every time. What you described happening to you is fixed 100% of the time when attached to the TUR before printing.

 

[PinkPrintingPixie]

Posting this just in case anyone has to print on this damned material in the future.

After the company sent me a couple sample rolls to test, and a super awesome fellow sign maker popping into my DMs with some recommended start settings- I got a great print. So without futher ado-

Printer - HP Latex 700W
Program - Flexi
Material - Panorama Courtwrap
Take Up Roll - Attached before printing and tension callibrated
Passes - 12
Ink Percentage - 100
Temp - 185 F
IPD - 250

Printed a test and it looks great and cures great up to 150% ink lay down. Minimal to no edge curling. I did have it get a bit staticy and head strike if I left it on the printer afterwards and it de-tensioned on the take up reel, but if you remove it directly after printing it's fine.

I hope this helps someone in the future!

 

[JBurton]

I did have it get a bit staticy and head strike if I left it on the printer afterwards and it de-tensioned on the take up reel, but if you remove it directly after printing it's fine.

There is a setting to have the printer feed out an extra margin at the end of a print, though I think it is a universal setting, not by individual media profile.
What did you have the vacuum set to? It's the only thing I really see missing from your recommended settings.

 

[PinkPrintingPixie]

There is a setting to have the printer feed out an extra margin at the end of a print, though I think it is a universal setting, not by individual media profile.
What did you have the vacuum set to? It's the only thing I really see missing from your recommended settings.

Vacuum was at 20, though honestly I didn't mess around with it much. That may be a setting to look at in the future.

 

[JBurton]

Vacuum was at 20, though honestly I didn't mess around with it much. That may be a setting to look at in the future.

I don't mean to say that, as much as that setting could be helpful to the poor soul trying to print on this stuff in the future. Also I realized, as far as that trailing margin setting, might as well build that margin into your artwork if the printer needs to be left unattended.

 

[PinkPrintingPixie]

I don't mean to say that, as much as that setting could be helpful to the poor soul trying to print on this stuff in the future. Also I realized, as far as that trailing margin setting, might as well build that margin into your artwork if the printer needs to be left unattended.

Copy that! Thanks for the additional advice, still new to creating profiles from scratch.