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Looking for premium solvent canvas

Dan Berg

New Member
We have 13 years printing pigment canvas and have now added an Epson S80600. Our media sales group sent us a roll of solvent Bianco Satin to run and it does not do it for me. Thin and a very plasticky feel to it.
We will no longer be spraying a protective varnish now that we have moved to solvent. Not a production shop printing mostly high end artist reproduction and hospitality wall art. Clients are very selective and want only the best.
What about 65%cotton/35% poly instead of the Bianco 65% poly/35% cotton? Most get gallery wrapped so it has to be a durable product that will not crack at the corners when stretching. I see Breathing Color has a whole line of 65% cotton 35% poly line.
Would prefer a nice textured satin rather than something smooth.
Suggestions? These larger rolls are from $400 to $600+ per roll so am looking for (paid) samples we can try first.

Dan Berg
Berg's Canvas Gallery
 
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netsol

Premium Subscriber
Dan, wouldn't it be simpler, since price doesn't seem to be your issue, to just print on the canvas you have been happy with all along? I would imagine the aqueous printable media. You were using would accept the solvent inks with no problem
 

Dan Berg

New Member
I was told by Lexjet that the coating is different and the solvent printer should be printed on a solvent canvas. Not sure sure if that is the gospel or not.
 
I was told by Lexjet that the coating is different and the solvent printer should be printed on a solvent canvas. Not sure sure if that is the gospel or not.

Hi Dan -

You can't run aqueous canvas on a solvent printer, it won't work. You can run an aqueous canvas on UV (we've done that many times before), but the benefit of getting away from aqueous is the cost savings (a solvent canvas should be around half the price per sq. ft. of a good aqueous canvas). We run multiple S80s printing nothing but canvas and I will say we still overcoat all S80 canvas prints as the ink is more durable than say our aqueous 9570s or P10/20000 printers, but it's not durable enough to not get scratched/smudged during handling/wrapping canvas. Our UV printer is durable enough that we don't overcoat that, but if you want to offer a premium product and not be touching up the canvas where ink has rubbed off during wrapping, I would stick to coating your canvases.

We need a canvas that can go up to 126 inches wide since we also do a lot of oversized canvas work on a UV hybrid printer. We use Aurora Textiles Expressions Semi Gloss and it's a very good middle of the road canvas and we pay around $.60 a sq. ft.

Another really nice canvas we used years ago was Sunset By Fredrix Satin Canvas, though I think it was more expensive ( when I looked it retail is $1.10 but you should be able to get discounts down in the $.75 a sq. ft. rate I would guess).

Epson's GS Solvent Canvas is a great canvas it's just really expensive as it's Epson's brand you pay for.

Finally, Breathing Color makes some really good canvas as well for solvent printers. I haven't worked with them in years, but when I did speak with their national sales Rep a few years back we could get some of their canvas down in the price range I was paying for Aurora Textiles by buying pallets (which we order canvas in), but it still wasn't as affordable as the Aurora and it didn't' seem to be any better.

Best of luck to you.
 

Dan Berg

New Member
Hi Dan -

You can't run aqueous canvas on a solvent printer, it won't work. You can run an aqueous canvas on UV (we've done that many times before), but the benefit of getting away from aqueous is the cost savings (a solvent canvas should be around half the price per sq. ft. of a good aqueous canvas). We run multiple S80s printing nothing but canvas and I will say we still overcoat all S80 canvas prints as the ink is more durable than say our aqueous 9570s or P10/20000 printers, but it's not durable enough to not get scratched/smudged during handling/wrapping canvas. Our UV printer is durable enough that we don't overcoat that, but if you want to offer a premium product and not be touching up the canvas where ink has rubbed off during wrapping, I would stick to coating your canvases.

We need a canvas that can go up to 126 inches wide since we also do a lot of oversized canvas work on a UV hybrid printer. We use Aurora Textiles Expressions Semi Gloss and it's a very good middle of the road canvas and we pay around $.60 a sq. ft.

Another really nice canvas we used years ago was Sunset By Fredrix Satin Canvas, though I think it was more expensive ( when I looked it retail is $1.10 but you should be able to get discounts down in the $.75 a sq. ft. rate I would guess).

Epson's GS Solvent Canvas is a great canvas it's just really expensive as it's Epson's brand you pay for.

Finally, Breathing Color makes some really good canvas as well for solvent printers. I haven't worked with them in years, but when I did speak with their national sales Rep a few years back we could get some of their canvas down in the price range I was paying for Aurora Textiles by buying pallets (which we order canvas in), but it still wasn't as affordable as the Aurora and it didn't' seem to be any better.

Best of luck to you.
Thank you for your input.
 
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