• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

L25500 :: non-stop substrate jams

HulkSmash

New Member
It's simple logic. The printer has a learning curve over the regular plug and play solvents. Some are faster than others at learning it. Some people aren't as technical and don't completely understand the machine... and it takes time.

We were able to set up our own printer/rip and had it printing the same day it arrived.. i'm telling you..70% of the time it's the user.
 

ProWraps

New Member
the HP is so much smarter than any other printer on the market that the learning curve and the ability to lam right off the machine is a MAJOR benefit over anything out there in its class.
 

cdiesel

New Member
Posters print beautifully. Our L25500 (bought as a used demo) had a problem when it arrived. Once that was fixed by the tech, we started printing immediately. Plug n play.

I'd guess that many of the people who have issues with this printer (or any other printer, for that matter) either have a real, physical problem, or have goofed something up by themselves. Most entry level printers will run pretty well right out of the box.
 

peavey123

New Member
Guys, check the usage on your maintenance kits. The issue for me was kit #3. Jams started occurring at 90% usage.
 

Jack Knight1979

New Member
Kit #3?

I know the heads are replaceable. How many maintenance kits are there for this printer and what are the costs?

I think it's great that there are end user kits to buy to keep the machine running. No need for tech visits, but I'm curious about the costs of these consumables.
 

HulkSmash

New Member
Kit #3?

I know the heads are replaceable. How many maintenance kits are there for this printer and what are the costs?

I think it's great that there are end user kits to buy to keep the machine running. No need for tech visits, but I'm curious about the costs of these consumables.

heads 95 bucks. Cleaning kits, 85 bucks.
 

MIMO

New Member
Hey Josh, thanks for the insight and tips on min drying power. I'd never thought of that. Do you see any reason not to run the drying module at 55C/131F all the time? Except for on uncoated papers, I've been cranking it up lately and all seems good.
 

jkdbjj

New Member
Poster paper is great on L25500, I am currently running plenty of the Oce Luster Poster Paper 10mil.

Only occasionally the blues will show some blotchiness, but I can increase pass to fix that when needed.

I am also a fan of the Mutoh Printers for the guy looking for new printers.
 

MIMO

New Member
Hey Josh, thanks for the insight and tips on min drying power. I'd never thought of that. Do you see any reason not to run the drying module at 55C/131F all the time? Except for on uncoated papers, I've been cranking it up lately and all seems good.

-------------------------------

BigfishDM said:
Remember there are 2 heaters in the printer, dryer and curer and they do very different things. Most of e time that wet print people see is because the water in the ink that needs to be dried out at the first heater has not dried completely and there for the curing heater can not fully do its job. So the key on a media where you have a problem with overheating (usually something like polypro is what people complain about but it prints perfectly and stays totally flat).

Usually in this "wet" situation people make the assumption they need to increase the curing but this is generally wrong. First you need to look at the "wet" print and establish if it's cured or not by trying to smudge the wet part with your finger. If its not cured the sole print will wipe off to the white of the media under, but generally what you will see when you do this test is only a small amount of ink coming off on our finger but most of it stays behind. Tis means that the print did actually cure, but that the water from the ink was not properly dried out by the first heater
In this case, keep the curing at the same setting if it is not heat affecting the media at this point and make sure the drying heater is set to the maximum 55. If it wasn't that may have been the problem. There is a cheat on the drying heater to get it above the 55 by increasing the "minimum drying power" to something like 1.1 or 1.2 (never go over 1.2 though because you can actually overheat that zone and get an error from the printer, under 1.2 will be fine).

When you increase the minimum power setting you are forcing the drying heater to run hotter and when you actually print if you look at the printer it will be running much hotter than 55 actually and this can often resolve the problem also The last thing that it's important to understand that curing a print in a L25500 is like baking a cake- if you want your cake quickly so you heat up the oven really hot and take the cake out early then the outside of the cake will be burnt and the inside uncooked. To point of that example is to help people understand that sometimes a media needs to be printed on a slower pass mode to give the heaters time to fully work but at a lower temperature in the case the media can't accept the heat very well.
I have some customers that try the pass modes to see the quality differences (as you might on a solvent printer for example) but because of the drop technology and the OMAS along with head nozzle monitoring the printer is pretty much the same print quality at almost all of the print pass modes so they assume they should just run 8-pass bidirectional on everything and then complain because some media doesn't cure properly ir is heat affected

In my experience cast vinyl needs to be run at 12-pass with a curing zone no hotter than 103degC. The mesh banner runs at 10-pass bidir low ink, with dry-55, cure-110 and the PVC backing is fractionally harder to get off after printing but not enough to matter in any way
Most monomeric and polymeric vinyl is ok at 10-pass bidir dry-55, cure-110 but a high quality polymeric vinyl such as 3M IJ poly must run at 12 pass or it gets heat affected.

So the key in all of this is even a really heat sensitive media like a thin polypro (that many assume doesn't work on latex) prints absolutely perfectly with no heat affect at all but you may have to slow the printer down a fraction. This should never be any concern because an L25500 (just like a L26500 now) is still running much faster than any of it's competitors even when run at a slower pass mode on the problem media. And if they want to run the printer faster they need to use a better grade product such as a thicker polypro that will be less heat affected

:toasting: :corndog:
 

dypinc

New Member
Hey Josh, thanks for the insight and tips on min drying power. I'd never thought of that. Do you see any reason not to run the drying module at 55C/131F all the time? Except for on uncoated papers, I've been cranking it up lately and all seems good.

-------------------------------

Two things that I have noticed that help by having lower drying heat is minimizing the wavy roller marks on media where that shows, and the banding solid light color that matches the platen marks. Vacuum setting also plays a part in this banding.

Otherwise I always max out the drying especially when the humidity is higher.
 

Robert Gruner

New Member
These forums are quite helpful in giving folks ideas re: temp operation, number of print passes, etc. for different media.

The L25500 take up is pretty much useless. The take-up will not put tension on the media. We have sourced a third party motorized take-up which we offer all our L25500 users. The tension will keep many thin and flexible materials flat on the platten.

HP ships a motorized take-up on the L26500.

We have also found that putting a "buck and boost" transformer on each 220V line keeps the voltage in spec and goes a long way towards optomizing printer temps for drying certain medai.

Good printing

Bob Gruner
bob@nusignsupply.com
 
Top