Synthetic Stocks

[Emtri]

Good Afternoon PrintPlanet!
We've been working on running a plastic stock through our c6500.
We want to market it to restaurants and other places where a waterproof "paper" would have benefits.
We've got a 10pt stock working well but pushing into the 12-16pt (we've had a lot of success running other 16pt stocks) stocks, the machine doesnt seem to want to fuse the yellow..it looks almost as if its rubbing off somewhere resulting in an odd looking colour gamut. I was wondering if anybody has tried anything like this before and gotten it to work.
The particular stock we are testing is Zodia

[arossetti]

We use to sell a lot of these menu's using Xerox's polyester paper and found that the toner will rub off with liquids that are left on the menu for long periods of time. ie a beer bottle placed onto a menu that then sweats and leaves a water ring - if that ring stays on the menu damp for say an hour the toner very easily flakes off. Or if the menus get wiped down with a damp rag (just water, no solvents needed) and the menu is put away damp for a few hours the toner will come right off with a little friction. I would test this theory at your shop before you sell too many. Take 2 printed menus that you produced on your equipment, put some water between them, sandwich them together and let them sit over night. When you come in the morning see if you can take up the toner with just a little pressure of a finger nail. We haven't tried to attempt this with Nekoosa's poly paper but we plan to.

[mglouis]

I once tested a variety of synthetic stocks through a Xerox DC5000 and ran into the same thing where the last down color wouldn't adhere in shadow areas. I ran into this to a lesser degree on 14 pt C1S on the second pass when printing 4/4. I found that increasing GCR helped somewhat but was no magic bullet. We lied to the RIP about the paper we were using. We ran the "BTR" settings, which I understood to be some sort of voltage setting, to the max. Nothing worked. Thin stocks imaged ok but were too thin to be used for cards or menus.

Having printed conventional offset on polylith I can also attest to menus deteriorating quickly in a bar room environment.

Matt Louis

[Emtri]

We had plan to laminate them to improve on durability. What we liked about the synthetic stock was the inability to tear easily due to lack of any real grain direction.

I am going to look into both Xerox's poly paper and Nekoosa

[Craig]

We use the Nekoosa and the only thing we have found to take the image off is Buffalo Wing Sauce! Boy does that crap do a number on it too. We tried everything before we sold the job too. Alcohol, Windex, Bleach, Blanket Wash.... unless you scrubbed the crap out of them everything was fine. Until we got menu's back from the customer with the image that was actually lifted of the sheet and moved to a different position, not rubbed off. Found out it was wing sauce.

[Emtri]

haha made my morning!

I should be getting some Samples in next week

[oldschool]

Greetings from Buffalo! Sorry bout the menus. We cherish our sauce.

[Keith]

I'm looking into a synthetic stock. Currently, I use Nekoosa 4mil adhesive vinyl to make trash can labels and bumper stickers.

Keith

[Elbertjolley]

I work for AccuLink in Greenville, NC. We use Yupo on our Indigo 7000 and 5500. We have way less stretch and registers way better than GPAs stock. Interested to see how it is going to on our Scodix 3D UV machine

[arossetti]

We use the Nekoosa and the only thing we have found to take the image off is Buffalo Wing Sauce! Boy does that crap do a number on it too. We tried everything before we sold the job too. Alcohol, Windex, Bleach, Blanket Wash.... unless you scrubbed the crap out of them everything was fine. Until we got menu's back from the customer with the image that was actually lifted of the sheet and moved to a different position, not rubbed off. Found out it was wing sauce.

I have samples from Nekoosa that I was able to lift the image off both the off-set and digital samples. We did some menu's for a cajun restaurant and hot sauce took the image off easily. Its probably the hot sauce in the buffalo sauce that is causing the same issue.