Temperature and Humidity - How to handle ambient conditions

Same as any digital textile printer, the Coloreel need to operate within certain ambient conditions. Specifically, this means a relative humidity in the range of 30%–80% RH and a temperature below 28°C/82°F, see Technical data, -Operating specifications.

In general, the best way to solve this is to operate within a room with some type of climate control.

• Use of portable humidifiers

  • To solve the issue with dry air several of our customers are using portable humidifiers to create a local microclimate with higher humidity.

    Sometimes a good solution is humidifier in combination with various variants of plastic sheets or tent like installations. In most cases this works well, but we have a few cases where this have caused new problems due to excess water and condensation. Therefor we issue these recommendations how to avoid problems when using a portable humidifier close to the Coloreel ITCU.

  • If you use an ultrasonic humidifier, do not use regular tap water. Use distilled water or de-ionized water. If you use regular water this can give rise to white mist, which consist of mineral particles that may cause short circuits in electronic equipment.

• Delimit the surrounding area

  • If the ITCU is operated in large areas and/or areas with highly efficient ventilation, one idea is to create an more limited area (volume of controlled air) that will be easier and less expensive to control.
  • Best solution would of course be to create a "room in the room", equipped with both temperature- and humidity control devices.
  • Second best solution is to use a textile material, creating a "tent" surrounding the ITCU and delimiting the air flow and adding a humidifier to keep the humidity within specifications.
    • WARNING! Be careful if using plastic material. Mind the higher risk of condensation
    • WARNING! Do not "wrap" the ITCU. There must be room for air circulation to prevent condensations. Condensing water might destroy electronic parts of the ITCU
    • CAUTION! Make sure that no condensation occurs on, or inside, the unit.

• Condensation

If you use plastic sheets or tent-like solutions, you need to make sure that condensation does not accumulate on or inside the unit.

Make sure that air can circulate around the unit. The area on top of the unit, near the fan output, is extra sensitive.

Only use the humidifier when needed and remove plastic sheets or similar during periods when they are not needed. Condensation getting inside the unit may cause corrosion and electronic failures.

• Good examples

  • This photo is showing a 8-head installation at a customer, using textile curtains (also covering the top of the stand, like a ceiling). This method is a great help to keep the humidified air from the humidifiers surrounding the units and keeps them running within operation specifications. 

     

• Bad examples

  • This photo is showing how a customer "wrapped" the ITCU with a plastic sheet, and putting a humidifier beneath it. Made the humidity high enough, for operation, but also created condensations within the unit, causing electronics to be destroyed.

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