What does everyone out there do to dry their prints? We laminate just about everything so at the moment we just take the prints of the printer and leave on the core for about 24 hours then laminate. I know this is bad as all the reps say they should be hung about and dried properly but when we are printing so much it is not really practical.
I have heard that some people have built their own drying units where they can loose roll the print on a core and have some sort of fan heater at the top which pushes the solvents down (has to be off the floor though)
You should de gas the prints before laminating either by the method you mentioned or laying on a bench for 24 hours, this is not drying the prints, but letting the solvent gas vent from the print.
You have to be carefull not to trap any solvent evaporation as it may change the colour of your print, this can happen within a few hours or even after a few days. As delivery dates are always being pushed to the limits, you have to do your best to dry the prints before they get overlaminated. We are a screen printing shop and we have the luxury of having drying racks and conveyor belt dryers to help speed up the process.
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Sure..no problem ! We will print today and ship it out yesterday!
Exactly. We screenprint as well and use drying racks and fans. One of my friends has a shop in town using a Seiko and they built a dryer upon the plan of one that was offered for another 3 or 4 grand at time of purchase. Just some small fans and heaters in a strip mounted to a roll away stand. I believe they are using racks from their printshop now instead of the dryer as well.
yeah i know what kind of racks you use for screen printing but all the reps here say we should hang the prints vertically as if we lay them flat the solvents will then go back into the adhesive and cause it to fail.
i may just build something in house and do it as a trial and error method
never heard of the solvents going back into the substrate and causing failures. the solvent is used firstly as a carrier for the ink and secondly to burn into the substrate to allow the ink to "colour" it. once in the solvent burns/evaporates/gases off leaving ink and colour. i've been running the seikos for at least 3yrs with no issues in lying the images down.
There are 2 drying heaters that are specifically made for this printer. The one that I have is a simple heater that will dry the prints when using the takeup reel. Heres a link for the now hp heater. I have a table to take my prints from the printer and under this heater and unless I have high density prints it dries them pretty fast.
Then there is a heavy duty one that I saw before but I can't find a link anywhere. It was alot bigger and could only be used for the take up reel method.
We bought our 64S in August 2005 and bought this heavy duty dryer along with it. No complaints on our end. This machine prints so fast that you need a good dryer to keep up with it. I've seen the new ones that come with the HP9000s and wonder how good of a job it actually does.
We have the 100s and we originally bought it 18 months ago with the dryer. i ended up returning the dryer unit as it was useless and not worth the thousands they where charging for it.
They arent trying to sell me an upright drying rack but telling us to hang them vertically. but it involves cutting the prints down so you dont have too much then hanging them up and then rolling back on a core to laminate. such a hassle when your printing huge amounts in a day.basically we just leave our prints on the core for 24 hours at the moment and then laminate but i know this is not the ideal situation but due to limitations in room etc it is hard to know what is the best alternative.
Yea thats it. Hey Razor, how does that dryer keep up when printing in high density?
As of now I do alot of backlit signage and I use high density to get the black black and I can't use the take up as the prints are too tacky with my dryer.
Hi Seatle, All depending on the media the dryer will keep up, just don't leave the prints on take up reel too long. The matt finishes are better than the gloss ones of course. We have printed on the "Magic SBL7 backlit" at high density and never had any problems. What backlit media do you use?
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Sure..no problem ! We will print today and ship it out yesterday!
For my backlit media, which is a vinyl, I use the 3M Scotchcal Film. 3630-20 It is pretty expensive and I can never use the take up reel because my dryer won't get it dry enough. I just spool the onto a table and hang them on the walls.
