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white dots all over my banner material.

0igo

New Member
just got some new Arlon banner material, 130z and I'm getting a lot of white spots on the material. I'm not sure if that's my new ink that's doing this or the material itself. I had someone behind the machine swiping the material with a cloth and that really helped a lot, but how can I get rid of this? please help.

my printer is sitting on carpet which I think generates more static and this material is supper staticky
 

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Gino

Premium Subscriber
Not sure of the ink being used, but it looks like contamination. Years ago, it was called FishEye.
 

floater302

New Member
Did you wipe down the material before printing on it? This will happen to me on my magnetic material if i dont wipe it down before printing on it.
 

0igo

New Member
Not sure of the ink being used, but it looks like contamination. Years ago, it was called FishEye.

I just switched over to Bordeaux ink a couple days ago as well. but it print fine on other things though. does fisheye come from the ink?
 

0igo

New Member
Did you wipe down the material before printing on it? This will happen to me on my magnetic material if i dont wipe it down before printing on it.

I had someone swipe it as the material was being fed into the machine. the banner size was 5x20 so that would have been a lot to unwound-wipe down-and rewound it. what do you wipe it down with?
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
In a sense. There is some form of a contaminant on the surface of your media. The ink is kinda like snot and wicks away from it and won't cover it as it's too transparent. If the material is wiped down properly, this won't happen. Just load it in and hope for the best..... this happens. With our flatbed, it won't happen, even if the media is somewhat contaminated, unless it's really really bad.
 

0igo

New Member
In a sense. There is some form of a contaminant on the surface of your media. The ink is kinda like snot and wicks away from it and won't cover it as it's too transparent. If the material is wiped down properly, this won't happen. Just load it in and hope for the best..... this happens. With our flatbed, it won't happen, even if the media is somewhat contaminated, unless it's really really bad.
oh okay makes sense. the times that we stopped wiping it down spots apeared. on your flat bed do you unroll the material wipe it down and then print? and thank you for the help.
 

player

New Member
okay im going to try that as well thank you I really appreciate it.

after you wipe it down with running alcohol how long do you wait to feed it in?

Use 99% Isopropyl running alcohol. It evaporate immediately.

Why did you switch inks. How many cartridges a week are you going through to justify the risk of
new heads and expensive repairs?
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
The way I was taught on this digital media stuff is to wipe it down and keep wiping it, til it dries. You don't wipe and let air dry, even for a moment. That wiping and letting air dry many times will leave streaks instead.

On the flatbed, most contaminants are just printed over with so many layers/passes and then dried with UV lamps, it doesn't do anything to harm it. ACM and Cor-X are a little different story, those we still have to wipe down a little bit.

Your new inks could also be a little less aggressive than your OEM inks were.

Most machines are built around the ink they are designed for.... and when you go around changing things to save money, it generally will cost you in some other area. Either lines become more brittle or different temps are needed or inks are less forgiving, but it just stands to reason...... all of these machines have patents out the whazoo and so do their inks, so when you change inks, you're changing recipes for your machine and things now work differently. And don't let any third party ink supplier tell you different. All you ever ask is, will it work ?? Yes. Is it identical ?? No. It can't be by law or they would be infringing on patents and open to lawsuits.

Clean the medias better and start a better maintenance program on your machine, cause you're gonna need it.
 

0igo

New Member
Use 99% Isopropyl running alcohol. It evaporate immediately.

Why did you switch inks. How many cartridges a week are you going through to justify the risk of
new heads and expensive repairs?

cost of oem ink is why i switched. and honestly i guess not enough. why do third party inks cause people to get new heads?
 

father

New Member
just got some new Arlon banner material, 130z and I'm getting a lot of white spots on the material. I'm not sure if that's my new ink that's doing this or the material itself. I had someone behind the machine swiping the material with a cloth and that really helped a lot, but how can I get rid of this? please help.

my printer is sitting on carpet which I think generates more static and this material is supper staticky

I've had this same thing. For me, I had cleaning solution left from a cleaning on the bottom the head and it would drip or shoot down with the ink. Left little white specks all over. Cleaned everything real good and it cleared up.
 

0igo

New Member
I've had this same thing. For me, I had cleaning solution left from a cleaning on the bottom the head and it would drip or shoot down with the ink. Left little white specks all over. Cleaned everything real good and it cleared up.

how did you clean everything? did you just run a couple normal cleans on the printer?
 

ams

New Member
I am having issues with my Arlon banner material as well, today I printed a 4' X 8' and there is a spider or fly in it. Not in the ink, but fused into the banner.
 

TimToad

Active Member
We had a whole roll of 54" 13. oz scrim with little hand prints throughout the roll. They'd only show up on prints with a colored background. I assume the factory workers are at fault as we wear cotton gloves while loading media and these were well into the middle of the roll, not where one of us would handle it.
 

Behrmon

Pr. Bear-Mon
I've never had great success with Arlon banner, tried for a while as the price point was good but gave up, just using UltraFlex now and have not had any issues yet.
 

father

New Member
how did you clean everything? did you just run a couple normal cleans on the printer?

I changed my spit pad, cleaned my wiper, around the head and around the cap top. Used cleaning solution on the wiper with a lint free cloth and a swab on the cap top. Then I went back and used a cloth to wipe any left over solution.
 

Brink

New Member
why do third party inks cause people to get new heads?

Different reasons.

In the case of Piezo heads (like epson heads) the cause would be clogs from particles in the ink too big to fit through the head. Lack of quality control or not using fine enough filters in the manufacturing process.

In the case of bubble jet or thermal jet (water based ink like in desk sized office printers) the pressure to push the ink out of the jet is due to heat. It's almost like a micro-sized steam jet. So the ink having the wrong specific heat (
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/spht.html) causes the ink to boil at too low a temperature which creates too much steam in the head which drives all the liquid in out of the head allowing the heater to get too hot because not enough liquid for cooling. Then the heater burns out due to the overheating. Or also the particle size issue mentioned in the first case.
 
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