I and many others are hardly ignorant. Nor are the many others who print and find no problems with lam on a print without waiting a couple of days or even a half day with
eco solvent printers.
Hence, I feel almost all outgas problems are urban legend and myth. Most cases of print failure is the result of the user. Not the fault of some vapor eating away at the product.
We all know that vinyl is not airtight. It is full of holes and air will escape from behind bubbles. Yes? I am not talking about blisters. I am talking about the tiny pockets of air and sometimes tiny pockets of positioning fluid. Wait a couple of hours and they will be gone. Every one knows that. Why should it be any different from the solvent vapor escaping out wards just as air does. There is no difference. If there was a real problem the we would all see pockets of gas building up under the lam. Has any one actually observed a pocket of vapor build up under a lam? Has any one ever observed a pickle skin? No one has.
Personally I have never observed a full size panel printed instantly. It takes a while for those panels to be printed. Yes? A 3x5 panel takes how long to print? How about a 4x 12 panel. Yes that takes much longer. If there was a true problem with vapor causing some malfunction we would see it appear at the end of a lammed print and not at the beginning of a print. The end has had no time to dry while the starting end has at least 45 minutes more time to dry. It has a head start on the drying process.
Next. The layer of ink is so minute so very thin that it dries very fast. Ever try to measure how much ink is actually used? It is a very small amount including all 4 colors. On average there is no more than a couple milliliters of ink total all colors on those prints. A heavy print could use maybe 3ml?
We lose more ink in a few spilled drops than is used on a foot of print.
Finally, off gas never seems to destroy the lam adhesive which we all know is right on the ink. It only seems to damage the glue on the opposite side of the print? Why is that?
And to the point of the vinyl feeling soft if not allowed to dry for a few days before lam is applied. We have all had more than a few days we had to put off laying regular high grade CAST vinyl on a warm day. It was to soft. So did the temp of the air have more of an effect than applying a lam to a print? I know a guy that used to apply printed vinyl outside in the sun. He could teach a sailor how to cuss on a few warm days. I know we all are chuckling about that because we all been there.
I propose a test. Take a sheet of vinyl and brush on some ink. How long does it take before the vinyl melts? How long before it gets soggy? It doesn't? Does the ink dry before we can observe any softening of the vinyl or damage to the adhesive? Do the same and then lam it when it gets dry enough for the lam to stick? Does it get soggy? Does it damage the adhesive? I think that would be more telling than some posts on a forum thread.
