New to canvas printing - advice please

[GC1pink]

Hi all,

I'm really interested in getting into canvas art/printing, could some of the experts in the group explain what I will need please? Can you transfer vinyl onto a premade canvas, or do you have to print your own image and stretch it and what printers are acceptable please?

Many Thanks

[cyprian.costelloe]

Hi all,

I'm really interested in getting into canvas art/printing, could some of the experts in the group explain what I will need please? Can you transfer vinyl onto a premade canvas, or do you have to print your own image and stretch it and what printers are acceptable please?

Many Thanks

You need a machine that has an ink that doesn't fade. Archival ink from Epson would be an example.

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[cyprian.costelloe]

You need a machine that has an ink that doesn't fade. Archival ink from Epson would be an example.

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If you want to do the whole job you will also need an underpinner (staples the frame together) a guillotine for cutting the wood. Stapler, canvas gripper, finishing tape.

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[Quinsfan]

When you say transfer vinyl have you got a solvent/latex printer? If so your media supplier may have some.


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[webtrekker]

If you are planning on transferring a vinyl print onto canvas then I imagine you'd have to make sure the vinyl had some stretch in it and also that it didn't crack when folded over the stretchers.

For normal prints you'd need decent quality canvas that again didn't crack when stretched.

Apart from the equipment, you'd need to price up different sizes of stretcher bars and wedges. You could buy in pre-made frames in a range of styles and sizes and still make a decent profit, or just sell the canvases unframed in standard sizes.

[Quinsfan]

If you are printing vinyl at the moment you just need to use a digital print canvas suitable for your inks. Alternatively print your vinyl as normal and then wrap it around a piece of 5 or 10 mm foamex instead to make a solid panel with the image.


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[Boyan]

I have printed like 10km of canvas on a large format printer.

First of all you will have to choose : print pro photography quality , print passable quality or print asian shop quality.

The first one you can do only using expensive canvases, the second could be done on a cheap canvas but have to find it from literally hundreds, for the third one you will need flatbed or eco solvent printer or nowadays even sublimate on polyester banner like material.

You will definitely need a printer like Hp or Canon with integrated colorimeter , so you could adjust your color accordingly automatically. Could be done with separate device, but you need to be more experienced and will waste much more time tuning the result, yes canvvas will need fine tuning and understanding whats happening. Especially cheap canvas will not be perfect so you will never achieve from perfectionist point of view 100% accurate color. But it will be passable.

Basically I have used Canon Image Prograf 8xxx. Never with original inks, inks i bought from UK. Never faded. After much hassle i have found a suitable cheap canvas that looked good, although not for super duper pro photographers. Cost was around 6euro per square meter ink,canvas and eventual head change included. the framing to stretch was another difficult matter but at the end we have found a manufacturer in some damned far away village / i am in Spain/ so A1 was like 4-5 euros and i put them together with electric stapler which we used also to stretch the canvas.

All videos on stretching the canvas were full of bullshit. After stretching thousands of them perfectly, i may say i found a good way to do it alone under 1 minute.


The printer will need the original collecting bag to collect the print,it folds nicely on itself without damage and generally i may say the Canon are the better printers for that. I dont know what happend at the last 5 years, but before that they printed much faster than the HP.

Again, you need a printer and color profiling device integrated , it will save you a lot of problems with the canvas. And the ink must be water proof,like they told you above. The Canon ink is.


Hope that helps. I will be happy to explain you further details, once you have set it up, if you have questions.

[GC1pink]

Thank you all so much for the information it's greatly appreciated, a special thank you to Boyan for an incrediblely detailed post for the novice. It's so nice to have a forum that is supportive of all. My thanks again.

[DyeSubSupplies]

First thing to decide is what size canvas you want to produce the most popular printers are 24" or 44" obviously the latter you can produce larger one. However most popular sizes are 10" x 8", 12" x 16" 16" x 20" or 24" and 20" x 30" All those sizes you can get from a 24" printer so if you don't really need bigger than that a 24" would do the job. As an earlier post suggested canvas printing is generally printed on one of the following printers Epson,Canon or HP. My recommendation would be a Epson 7880 (24") or 9880 (44") not the fastest of the 3 but you can use inktec inks in these machines which is a fantastic ink and will save you a lot of money. My sister site to dyesublimationsupplies is www.canvasandstretcherbars.co.uk we sell everything you need apart from the printers ( should be loads of second hand ones this time of year) canvas, Stretcher bars, ink, tools, ect we can also set up the profiles for you. If you need any more help or advice feel free to contact me steven@canvasandstretcherbars.co.uk or give us a call in the new year.
steve

[webtrekker]

Can I just add that if you are planning on doing gallery wraps, as opposed to framed prints, then you need a printer wide enough to print the wrap-around edges, which will also depend on the depth of the finished gallery wrap.