Travel Mug - printing reddy tint not full black

[gstk]

We have a New Ricoh 3300n (Marvellous machine - throw your D120 away today) For some reason the travel mugs are not coming up deep black. Its as though there is not enough black and it come with a redish tint. We have done hundreds of these on the d120. We have tried all sorts of different temps and times but no joy.

Anyone got any ideas or come up against this before? Will try and attach pic

Thanks[attachment=0:1h23yk3b]IMG_1111 (Large).JPG[/attachment:1h23yk3b]

[Andrew]

It is very hard to get a decent black from most printers and items like the silver metal seem to show this up more. Light seems to reflect and lift the colour more. A black bordering on the blue side rather than red might help get around this as the blacks are made up from cmy so just tilt it in the direction needed. My old 1290's used to be a swine for greenish blacks. Try a few different shades of black to see if any are better.

[gstk]

It prints black okay on the silvered water bottles which is weird.

[Andrew]

Might be to much heat then as the stainless steel conducts differently. How long and what temp do you use? Knock 10c off and 20 secs. Could be a matter of trial and error.

[gstk]

Might be to much heat then as the stainless steel conducts differently. How long and what temp do you use? Knock 10c off and 20 secs. Could be a matter of trial and error.

been there, done that still no joy.

TM

[Andrew]

It does look a bit scorched to me but if you have lowered times and temp then I would go back to the original and test different shades of black and more specifically lean toward cyan.

What time and temp do you use out of interest?

[Andrew]

Just checked a couple of samples that were printed a while ago on both the alu bottle and ss flask. They both have the same design and the flask does have a far more redder tint than the bottle.

A tweak in the colour the opposite direction might limit the effect as mentioned above.

[gstk]

It does look a bit scorched to me but if you have lowered times and temp then I would go back to the original and test different shades of black and more specifically lean toward cyan.

What time and temp do you use out of interest?

we use 180 degrees for 180 seconds - whihc has worked fine in the past.

[Andrew]

I would think that is a little long for a metal item. 60 seconds could be taken off straight away. These things obviously depend on your press but I can get away with 90secs for the metal mug/flask. Might help, might not all depends how short a time you tested it to.

[bms]

Hi Tony,

If you're comparing the Ricoh print on the travel mug to the Epson print in the past then that could explain it. We've found that the Artainium inks can withstand longer time/ temp and still give excellent prints, whereas the Ricoh's using SubliJetR ink are a little more sensitive. Browning of the blacks is caused by too high a temp for too long - you might think the brown is caused because it hasn't sublimated enough, but it's the opposite way round. Browning and/ or blurring with the SubliJetR inks means you need to drop off the time/ temp combination.

I'd take the time down to 120 seconds, possibly down to 90 seconds if you're using a mug press that heats up from a lower temp before starting the timer countdown.