UV & Coro

[Junkie]

We have a 5465 and we are one of the ones that love it. We print about 35 hours a week and it has been a real time and money saver. Our issue is with adherring to corrugated plastic. It prints and lays down real nice but if you put some tape on it, most of the time the print comes off with it. Last night we printed on 3 brands. Coroplast, Inapro & Corex. We prefer the Inapro and Corex b/c it feels stronger and is more opaque. However, when we came in today we took banner tape to all three samples. The Corex and Inapro comes up, sometimes in full length and width of the tape. The ink on the coroplast will not come up. No matter if we squeege the tape down and rip it fast or slow. The only times anything came up is was little nicks. We tried and tried and the ink is on there. What are you all finding out with what you are using? I would rather not use coroplast, but after this I can't see how I can use anything else. The corex print we completely removed with banner tape. Is case you are wondering we clean everything with 91% alcohol. We have our profiles where we like them and everything else is great. Just trying to find the best coro to print on.

[rfulford]

Try to find coroplast that is corona treated. Corona treated plastic will have a slightly rougher texture and a lower Dyn rating.

[rfulford]

You may also want to try a lower cure energy/slower print speed. Sometimes if the ink is cured too fast, it can become brittle.

[Junkie]

We slowed the printer down and jacked up the lamp settings. If we print magnetic, sintra, aluminum, etc and we take banner tape to those prints (usually 24 hours after printing) the ink will not budge. All other substrates are printing perfect. What brand of opaque corrugated plastic are you using with your uv printer? Like I said we have printed on Corex, Coroplast & Intapro. We don't like the coroplast brand b/c it is a little flimsey. The Intapro has a blue tint to it. The Corex is o.k. but definately not 100% opaque. We have printed test after test after test with all 3, changing speeds, lamp settings, ink levels, etc. If anyone can recommend an opaque material they are using that is working well, please let me know. I would rather pay extra to get a good opaque, white, square cut piece of coro.

[rfulford]

I have recently switched jobs. My new company does not print much coroplast on its UV printer. We screen print large jobs and use PSA and mount to coro on small ones.

I used to purchase Coroplast from Laird plastics in Dallas. We used a PressVu UV for printing. Not all Coroplast is corona treated, be sure you specify this. Non treated Coroplast will have a much glossier appearance.

We used a medium carriage speed of 40 ips per second and a moderate cure energy. The lamp setting on the vutek was "set and cure". In bidirectional print mode, this would leave the leading lamp on and the trailing lamp off.