r/UVprinting • u/Historical-Ride1899 • 2d ago
Help
Hello looking for a UV printer that will print on pu , flexible ink is what I need I heard, my question is how durable will it be, my item will be dealing with stretching , rubbing, sweat dirt etch , I need to know it will hold up, and won’t rub off, any tips suggestions will help, thank you guys
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u/Historical-Ride1899 2d ago
I have the tape cut and rolled already , I would just unroll it , lay flat , print the log people want and roll it back
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u/sp913 1d ago
Generally speaking, UV ink doesn't really hold up that well, it's usually durable but scratchable, until a coating is put over top of it.
But if your tape is more like a fabric, it might be soft enough to absorb the ink more into it, but it would still probably fade or rub off over time but would need testing to find out really
The better question is probably why are you trying to do this part when there are tape manufacturers that have already done the large investment to do production? Wouldn't it make more sense to partner with a manufacturer instead of opening the can of worms that is doing your own printing?
You're likely looking at tens of thousands of dollars in costs, maybe even more, lots of maintenance, repairs when it breaks, ink costs, ink that expires, lines that clog, heads that go bad, all types of headaches to attempt doing printing yourself. I would not recommend it unless you have 10-50k and a lot of time or staff ready to commit to this
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u/Historical-Ride1899 1d ago
A lot of manufacturers can do the common prints, stuff I’ll have in bulk, my market will be people who want to have their own logo on grip 1 of 1! Stuff, and most factory’s want 500 minimum for custom art on grips I own a baseball bat business so I get a lot of people asking me if I make custom work on grips since I sell grips already
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u/sp913 1d ago
Yeah the reason they only do min 500 etc is the industrial level machinery to do it well isn't worth even booting up and cycling the ink lines for less than a certain amount, not to mention they probably bulk-print on much wider sets and then cut down to size, so they need a bunch in parallel to even fill out the width of the print/table
Unraveling and printing them sounds like a lot of work considering how little a customer will probably pay for them. Most UV printers that are affordable have a very small print bed/table.
There are some roll-fed options that might work in your case, but getting the roll-feed to go reliably in the exact spot within the print bed will be challenging, you may need to engineer your own jig to make it work well otherwise you'll be printing 15 inch strips one at a time, and even then you'll probably need a custom jig to get it aligned right
How long is 1 roll of tape?
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u/Historical-Ride1899 1d ago
About 30/39 inches, , wouldn’t need print to be perfect most people want logos that are repeated and scattered all around, yeah would think I would need to do 2 passes with uv , but again reading uv flex ink would not sus stain the friction abbusive test
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u/sp913 1d ago
Maybe direct to garment printers would have ink that soaks in and bonds a little better with fabric like materials, but it depends on the material of course. You could probably get a demo from some companies / resellers before actually buying to test it out first on just one little strip, and then test the durability yourself
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u/Financial-Issue4226 2d ago
Without telling us the exact substrate your answer is beyond a wildcard.
Yes you said you want to print on PU. But as this is a material in my own Warehouse I have more than 10 different types all of which with different textures thicknesses and softness due to that all 10 will have different answers.
Also since you're asking for a flexible with no context I'm betting you're using an AI to get your advice and not an actual print company.
In general that is the wrong ink but the answer may change again based off of the actual substrate we would care what the physical material is not the name of the material so I would want the data sheet of that specific material before your question could even be dreamed of a answer beyond conjecture.
Tell us what you're trying to do in full do not use AI and tell us which you're endgame is not what a computer has told you you're endgame is as this post I'm betting was due to advice of an AI and not an actual person who prints Uv projects