Profiling films

[CES020]

A stopped by a buddy's shop and he handed me a roll of polyester backlit film and said he had no use for it. It has no name brand on the core, so I don't know where it came from, but it's a full 150 ft of it. I printed it on our HP latex using the profile for HP's backlit polyester film. It doesn't look too bad, but the black pooled up like it's laying down too much ink. I wasn't sure what the proper action to take was.

Can I do an entire calibration of that material on the latex machine? I assume it'll print and read the colors right since it's opaque? Or so I just copy that HP profile and then run just the ink limits and get the dialed in?

I'm just a little confused on the best method to get that profile working for that material.

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[DIGIXTRA]

To make profile for a backlit material you will need a Spectrometer. Unfortunately this equipment is not a tool that average sign shop would want to own. Your Eye1 won't do it.

A stopped by a buddy's shop and he handed me a roll of polyester backlit film and said he had no use for it. It has no name brand on the core, so I don't know where it came from, but it's a full 150 ft of it. I printed it on our HP latex using the profile for HP's backlit polyester film. It doesn't look too bad, but the black pooled up like it's laying down too much ink. I wasn't sure what the proper action to take was.

Can I do an entire calibration of that material on the latex machine? I assume it'll print and read the colors right since it's opaque? Or so I just copy that HP profile and then run just the ink limits and get the dialed in?

I'm just a little confused on the best method to get that profile working for that material.

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[CES020]

Any suggestions on how to use the material then? If we need to buy a spectrometer, we will, long term, but since I don't have work for this product, I thought I'd just play with it some.

I thought about just running the ink limit tests and see if that helps. The colors look great when backlit, it's just got too much ink going down on the blacks.

 

[DIGIXTRA]

Yes you can limit the ink but then you have to have some way to incorporate the change to your ICC. You will need a software that can edit a profile (Profile Editor). If you use Wasatch rip you can cheated it by go to Color Transform then lower the Ink Limit. I beleive you can do it with Onyx too but I never play with it so I can not give you any answer.

Another way to over come this issue is by slowing down the printing speed (head travel) or use finer passes (such as 16 passes vs 8 passes ets..) this will give the printer enough time to dry the excess ink. Be aware that this will take longer time to print.
Hope this could help.

Any suggestions on how to use the material then? If we need to buy a spectrometer, we will, long term, but since I don't have work for this product, I thought I'd just play with it some.

I thought about just running the ink limit tests and see if that helps. The colors look great when backlit, it's just got too much ink going down on the blacks.

 

[AF]

I believe the HP profile is 16 pass already. If the black ink isn't coalescing then try increasing cure temp / airflow percent / min drying power. I had the same issue with HP backlit and stock profile but overcame it by adjusting the above parameters.