Dual roll printers, head strikes and fine art materials

[Richard.Wills]

Over the years, I've lost track of the number of evenings I've lost, babysitting print runs on our 9800>8300>8400 printers. Be it runs on SAV, enhanced matt, or platines or photorags. Regular sessions printing 10 - 100 prints, nursing the first couple of feet of thicker media, then taping 60" prints on the office and corridor walls. Then noticing a headstrike the next morning.

The discussion on the repair costs on an E 20000, sent me off window shopping, and seeing 60 - 64" printers, with dual roll handling for £6-8K. Makes me wonder if whether a switch to dual roll would be of benefit, given that work is split 40:60 lower end to high cost/metre materials, particularly wrt having a take up roll to tension the media. Some of the papers are >£15/metre, and will easily consume another £15 of ink (from 700ml carts). Our 8400 is getting long in the tooth.

I normally (depending on humidity) hang cotton rag and alpha cellulose materials for 12 - 48 hours before either mounting or packaging prints. Depending on humidity, I'll laminate vinyls or RC papers 6 - 24 hours after printing.

Does anyone run art papers roll to roll? Does the tension of the take up help with avoiding head strikes on thicker materials? How do people deal with out gassing? Given that art papers tend to max out at 50' rolls, if I could happily set the printer to run at a reduced speed, this might help with the first stage of ink evaporation, when the paper is softest, and decant the take up roll in the morning.

My work space is tight, and has a couple of 8x4 tables on wheels, as well as the printer, cuttiers, and media racks. I don't have space for a 64" laminator or 10x5 tables, so most of this is looking at a decrease in baby sitting, with the added bonus of being able to offer print only at a larger size.

Just pondering options for the next stage...

[Panagiotis]

Over the years, I've lost track of the number of evenings I've lost, babysitting print runs on our 9800>8300>8400 printers. Be it runs on SAV, enhanced matt, or platines or photorags. Regular sessions printing 10 - 100 prints, nursing the first couple of feet of thicker media, then taping 60" prints on the office and corridor walls. Then noticing a headstrike the next morning.

The discussion on the repair costs on an E 20000, sent me off window shopping, and seeing 60 - 64" printers, with dual roll handling for £6-8K. Makes me wonder if whether a switch to dual roll would be of benefit, given that work is split 40:60 lower end to high cost/metre materials, particularly wrt having a take up roll to tension the media. Some of the papers are >£15/metre, and will easily consume another £15 of ink (from 700ml carts). Our 8400 is getting long in the tooth.

I normally (depending on humidity) hang cotton rag and alpha cellulose materials for 12 - 48 hours before either mounting or packaging prints. Depending on humidity, I'll laminate vinyls or RC papers 6 - 24 hours after printing.

Does anyone run art papers roll to roll? Does the tension of the take up help with avoiding head strikes on thicker materials? How do people deal with out gassing? Given that art papers tend to max out at 50' rolls, if I could happily set the printer to run at a reduced speed, this might help with the first stage of ink evaporation, when the paper is softest, and decant the take up roll in the morning.

My work space is tight, and has a couple of 8x4 tables on wheels, as well as the printer, cuttiers, and media racks. I don't have space for a 64" laminator or 10x5 tables, so most of this is looking at a decrease in baby sitting, with the added bonus of being able to offer print only at a larger size.

Just pondering options for the next stage...

I am printing on a PRO-4000. I don't have the second roll unit but I plan to add it.

In the driver setting there is an option to pause printing between scans (lines) to let the paper dry:

https://ugp01.c-ij.com/ij/webmanual/PrinterDriver/W/PRO-4000/1.0/EN/PPG/Dg-main.html#main_06

but I have printed around 500 square meters of paper (mostly RC but also a lot of Canson baryta Prestige 340 and Hahnemuhle baryta FB 350, and two rolls of canvas). I always set the head height to "Auto" and I have never had a head strike.

I am planning to add the second roll unit as a method to decurl prints by letting the printed paper staying rolled in reverse for a day or more.

The PRO-6100 comes with the second roll unit as standard.

Hope this helps a bit.

[Richard.Wills]

Thank you Panagiotis,

The pause between scans certainly does help, but does rather slow down production, when waiting for the prints.

I look forward to hearing your sucsesses (?) with the take up reel.

The heating in our building has just kicked in, and so relative humidity is dropping fast. I can turn that off in my zone, but printing and finishing takes place in the same area, and the laminates hate to be cold. So we're going to be very dry for the rest of the season. I've got old rolls of media where I've written "curly or springy", with a date on the box - most seem to be winter problem rolls, and mostly last 30% of the rolls. I suspect that a dual / take up roll system won't compensate for the inherent curl on art materials, but would help for the low tension materials (SAV, bond paper etc).

I do find that materials such as Presige 340 can be relaxed in a couple of minutes reverse rolled in a roll (2"core) of tissue paper. Would be nice to come in in the morning and decant the flattened prints from a take up roll.

[mearussi]

Thank you Panagiotis,

The pause between scans certainly does help, but does rather slow down production, when waiting for the prints.

I look forward to hearing your sucsesses (?) with the take up reel.

The heating in our building has just kicked in, and so relative humidity is dropping fast. I can turn that off in my zone, but printing and finishing takes place in the same area, and the laminates hate to be cold. So we're going to be very dry for the rest of the season. I've got old rolls of media where I've written "curly or springy", with a date on the box - most seem to be winter problem rolls, and mostly last 30% of the rolls. I suspect that a dual / take up roll system won't compensate for the inherent curl on art materials, but would help for the low tension materials (SAV, bond paper etc).

I do find that materials such as Presige 340 can be relaxed in a couple of minutes reverse rolled in a roll (2"core) of tissue paper. Would be nice to come in in the morning and decant the flattened prints from a take up roll.

Have you tried double coated paper yet?

I just finished a large comparison of both MK and PK 100% cotton/OBA free papers (using my IPF6400 on 8.5x11) and the 2x papers do have far less edge curl. Admittedly there's only one PK 2x paper I'm aware of, BC's River Stone Satin Rag, but it is a very nice paper with low reflectivity (for a PK paper) and the image quality for all PK papers is now so similar that visually I see very little, if any, difference between them.

Same with MK papers. The IQ differences are minimal I suppose due to all modern coating formulas being similar. But the end result of that is that papers can now be chosen based on other characteristics instead of IQ.  The MK paper I now prefer after my tests is Premier Art's Smooth Hot Press Natural, and at 325gsm and 18ml is one of the heaviest thickest MK papers available.

And as I prefer thicker heavier papers I do set the head height and vacuum to max which also helps to minimize head strikes.

[Richard.Wills]

Thanks mearusi.

Unfortunately, the River Stone Satin Rag isn't available from their UK distributors. But until now, I didn't know they had a UK distributor!
Will have a look at some of the other options - I regularly get asked about double sided printing, but tend to shy away, as registration on the Canon would be a nightmare, and it has that habit of sometimes leaving lines on the back of prints.

[Richard.Wills]

Just revisiting this, as we're seeing more requirements for long runs of self adhesive vinyl, phototex, and potentially short term banner printing.
Has anyone had hands on dual roll experience of either the new Canon 6100 (or x100 series printers), or the new HP 64" (or other dual roll capable from that family)? I know that aqueous printers are not normally sign making production tools, but even an eight year old machine can produce really good looking prints when sold with the understanding that they are 6-12 months exterior usage.

I'm pretty sure that the machines will plough through regular production materials in take up reel mode, and have no real worries about that aspect. Just wondering if the dual reel capability has any impact on the media path when a single roll of art paper is being used, even if it is still print, then cut off and place print somewhere, then next print.

I think I can work the financing for the Canon, and certainly have a space for it, not so sure about the HP.

I'd also appreciate any thought as to the RIP. Our vintage version of Fiery xpress won't run a new machine, and won't run on a modern OS. A bonus feature for the RIP would be cutter (Graphtec) control, though I could do what I do now using a combination of Illustrator for the cutting path, and then over to the RIP. Printed cut vinyl does not currently make up much of a percentage of production, but the odd short term internal order comes through.