Printing onto Vinyl

[tinman0]

What type of printer do i need to buy to print onto vinyl? Is there anything in particular thats needed?

Sorry for daft question.

[chris.mapey]

Just been chatting to a chap, he swears blind its an inkjet printer they use for printing banners (it's approx 8' wide...)

IIRC, it's the ink that makes a difference rather than how the ink is applied.

Sorry to not be more help!

Chris

[tinman0]

cheers for that. i'm trying to figure it out at the moment and it looks like i need a solvent printer. and they cost a bit.

[Plotloss]

You can laser onto vinyl if the vinyl is laser specced.

Just like laser transparencies.

[jon h]

What size of prints do you want to do? Generally, to print to standard self adhesive vinyl without a special coating, you need either a solvent inkjet or UV curing inkjet printer, typically all large format devices. I have 4 solvent machines here at work which cost between £20 000 and £250 000 each, but the expensive ones are quite big! You can get vinyl with a special coating on to receive aqueous inks in a standard desktop printer, but the coating is not particularly weather resistant and noor are the inks, so it is fine for internal use but will fail if used out doors. You can improve life a bit by lamination or applying a protective liquid coating.

Jon H