Major Static issues on Styrene

[Alan B]

Who has used an antistatic blower and what have your results been? We've been fighting many problems on our OCE Arizona-odd displacement of ink and dust caused ink droplets on our prints-mostly on .060 Styrene.

 

[tbaker]

Static is an ongoing problem in the industry. One of the best solutions I have found is from stopstatic.com. It’s very simple and cost effective.

 

[DerbyCitySignGuy]

I've found that the anti-static spray from Techspray works very well on styrene and acrylic both.

 

[Andy D]

I made my own anti-static micro-fiber mop, that I would run over the sheet dry prior to printing.
It's cheap and fairly effective.

 

[Solventinkjet]

Check out the environmental requirements for your machine and make sure you are within spec. This will greatly reduce static in the room overall. They have those specifications for a reason. You will still run into issue though. The above solutions are great especially Andy D's lol. I have also seen people use dryer sheets to rub down the material and reduce static. If the printer is on carpet, it shouldn't be, you can mix a solution of about 1 to 6 water and fabric softener and spray it around the floor around the machine which helps a little. Check out if Oce has an ionizer accessory. Mimaki uses a device that rides along with the gantry "unstaticizes" the material before it gets printed on and it seems to work great.

 

[petepaz]

we have a roland LEJ . we use sprayway-SW-955 anti static eliminator. works pretty good. the only thing with the static sprays you have to test it to make sure it doesn't effect how your ink sticks to the boards. also you may have to wipe them down after they print. mostly that is just with acrylic because you can sometimes see some over spray

 

[TimToad]

Our flatbed has some built antistatic devices and its usually not much of an issue, but for problem substrates we place a wet lint free wipe at the very ends of the material that won't be printed on and it acts like a magnet to the static. I love Andy's tool and may just have to try one.

Stopstatic.com seems to have some printing specific solutions worth looking into.

In a related thread, Brad spoke about a wet chamois and we use one of those for acrylic and other materials. we are applying vinyl to or painting. I usually don't like to wipe the substrates being direct printed with anything after either the alcohol or degreaser wipe down.

Has anyone using the sprays directly on the substrate seen an effect in their prints?

Are the sprays just ionized air with a delivery liquid that evaporates?

 

[ChicagoGraphics]

You can also use Christmas garland (gold only) and drape it on the back of your printer or lay it on top of your material, works like a charm.