Xanita board is designed to be printed on wide-format digital flatbed printers or hybrid printers (a printer that can print roll to roll or rigid flat sheets). The Board has thickness, so you want a printer that can print at least 17mm off the bed.
Additionally you need a printer that can print a minimum of 1250mm wide but preferably 2500mm wide as this will allow you to fit a standard sheet of 2440mm x 1220mm comfortably onto your print bed and be able to print the board’s length in a single sweep.
Most printers nowadays utilise UV inks and this is what we recommend. The new latex inks also work very well on our board. You can print on Xanita Board with solvent inks and screen printing or even painting the board is also very much an option.
Pre-print
It is advisable that all boards are handled using clean gloves both before and after printing. This eliminates the risk of fingerprints, grease, oil…etc, affecting the printing area.
Allow materials to acclimatise to press room conditions. Recommended application temperatures 5°c – 45°c.
Occasionally a phenomenon known as TSP may occur on full pallets of Xanita Board. ‘Top Sheet Phenomenon’ results in very low humidity surroundings and may manifest itself in a slight curl of just the top sheet. The exposed top sheet may suffer some moisture loss and subsequently some shrinkage of the top liner will result. This is not a permanent state and acclimatisation of the board will correct this. Additionally it is advisable to turn the top sheet over upon receipt to correct.
When printing it is advisable to dust off any fibre residue resultant of the manufacturing process and run a flat edge around all four sides of the board to depress any raised edges.
If you are unable to get the board to lie perfectly flat even with the vacuum on, try securing it with masking tape around the edges, this should create a better seal for the vacuum.
If you are uncertain about your printer’s parameters, set the print head height to 1mm higher than the board thickness. I.e. if the board is 10mm, you will set the parameter to 11mm.
Post-print
To reiterate, it is advisable that all boards are handled using clean gloves both before and after printing. This eliminates the risk of fingerprints, grease, oil…etc, smudging ink that has not full cured post print.
Do not touch the printed area immediately after printing. Printed boards are not properly cured and need to be handled with care.
We have manufactured drying racks for freshly printed boards. These racks are essentially L-shaped pallets on wheels, with divider slots for the boards. Boards are stacked in the rack, one board per slot.
If you do not have a drying rack, avoid stacking printed boards face to face. Use paper liner as an interleaf between boards to prevent prints from sticking to the opposing boards. You should also take care to place boards down when stacking as opposed to sliding them on top of each other which could potentially scuff the print.
Allow at least 10 minutes for the boards to dry before varnishing or cutting.