UCJV330 spot gloss after lamination?

[Tatonka]

Can the UCJV330 (or any other roll-to-roll UV) read registration marks to accurately put down spot varnish AFTER laminating? I want to be able to print on vinyl with one printer (most likely an Epson S80600), presumably with registration marks applied in Illustrator, then laminate, then load that roll/sheet into a UV printer to put spot gloss on.

Is this possible? It looks like I can add marks with Finecut in Illustrator, but I can't find anywhere stating the printer would be able to read those to print another layer.

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

As far as I know, there is no easy way to do such a thing.

 

[Solventinkjet]

It's definitely not a core feature. You could play around with it though. If it were me, my first attempt would be to add the FineCut crop mark. Then, after you print and laminate, load the print back into the machine. Make sure mark detect is turned on and hit the end key while in local mode. Then line up the red LED with the first crop mark and hit enter. It will read the mark and set the origin at that corner. Then switch to print mode and send the spot varnish file. The main question I don't have the answer to is, does setting the cut origin also apply to the print origin. I've never tried it before.

 

[Tatonka]

It's definitely not a core feature. You could play around with it though. If it were me, my first attempt would be to add the FineCut crop mark. Then, after you print and laminate, load the print back into the machine. Make sure mark detect is turned on and hit the end key while in local mode. Then line up the red LED with the first crop mark and hit enter. It will read the mark and set the origin at that corner. Then switch to print mode and send the spot varnish file. The main question I don't have the answer to is, does setting the cut origin also apply to the print origin. I've never tried it before.

I don't have one here, I'm trying to figure out if it's even possible before buying the printer. I've got a couple suppliers working on it too, but thought I'd ask here as well.

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Re-indexing a piece of material after it's been removed from a printer, laminated and then re-fed into the machine is always going to be tough to do with any real accuracy. Unlike cutting where there is some level of skew and stretch compensation, you basically have to be exact. If I were doing similar, I would probably use a flatbed printer for at least the later part of the job.

Is it possible? Sure, but it's going to be a lot of trial and error and far from an automated process.

 

[Tatonka]

Re-indexing a piece of material after it's been removed from a printer, laminated and then re-fed into the machine is always going to be tough to do with any real accuracy. Unlike cutting where there is some level of skew and stretch compensation, you basically have to be exact. If I were doing similar, I would probably use a flatbed printer for at least the later part of the job.

Is it possible? Sure, but it's going to be a lot of trial and error and far from an automated process.

a flatbed is certainly an option, and my backup plan if there's no good R2R solutions. However, I don't see any reason the skew compensation couldn't be done while printing as well, it's all based on the registration marks anyway.

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

The registration marks would just be for manually setting your zero by eye using the red pointer LED, the printer doesn't scan those unless doing a cut. Running a sheet through lamination, especially heated lamination, had a definite chance of at least slightly changing dimensions.