Edge Holders for the HP Latex Printers

How edge holders for the HP L26500, also called media clips, prevent head strikes. 

By Jim Hingst @hingst_jim

The original HP L25500  did not have the edge guards as a standard feature.  Later versions eventually did. If you bought one of the original  L25500s, you can buy edge holders for your equipment.

Photo Courtesy of X-Rite

The HP L26500 latex printers are designed with media edge holders. These edge holders, which are also referred to as media clips, are designed to prevent the edges of the media from lifting up, while you are printing so you don’t get head strikes. What a great feature! These holders are particularly helpful when printing on substrate that tends to deform, such as polycarbonate film. 

Unfortunately, owners of the HP L25500 do not have this feature on their printers as standard equipment. This is not an insurmountable problem, however. If you own the older latex printer, you can buy these edge holders from HP Parts for the HP L26500 and fit them on to your HP L25500.

Be forewarned, though, the edge holders are not cheap. You will pay about $200 USD for each one.  You will need to buy two of these clips, one for each edge of the media.

Undoubtedly, you will not be too thrilled about shelling out $400 bucks for two little parts. But according to my friend, Chris Gwinn from X-Rite, these clips are worth the investment because they prevent potential damage to your printheads. 

Each edge holder consists of two parts.  The bottom part has position or alignment pins. These pins fit into the placement holes on the platen of the printer. All you do to install the edge holders is to snap them into the desired places.  Then slide the top part of the edge holder to align with the edge of the media. Then adjust the print width so the printheads avoid colliding with the media print holders.   After that, you should be good to go.

Chris told me that you can buy HP parts on line. He received his in a couple of days. You won’t need to use edge holders on every type of media.  But when the print media is deforming, resulting in head strikes, these clips are a nice additional to your bag of tricks.

Thanks for the great tip, Chris!

Note: X-Rite (www.xrite.com) is a leader in the science of color management. Media manufactures, such as RTape, use X-Rite to create printer profiles so our customers can print the color they want without wasting media or production time.

About Jim Hingst: After fourteen years as Business Development Manager at RTape, Jim Hingst retired. He was involved in many facets of the company’s business, including marketing, sales, product development and technical service.

Hingst began his career 42 years ago in the graphic arts field creating and producing advertising and promotional materials for a large test equipment manufacturer.  Working for offset printers, large format screen printers, vinyl film manufacturers, and application tape companies, his experience included estimating, production planning, purchasing and production art, as well as sales and marketing. In his capacity as a salesman, Hingst was recognized with numerous sales achievement awards.

Drawing on his experience in production and as graphics installation subcontractor, Hingst provided the industry with practical advice, publishing more than 150 articles for  publications, such as  Signs Canada, SignCraft,  Signs of the Times, Screen Printing, Sign and Digital Graphics and  Sign Builder Illustrated. He also posted more than 325 stories on his blog (hingstssignpost.blogspot.com). In 2007 Hingst’s book, Vinyl Sign Techniques, was published.

Slides of Jim's Artwork

© 2015 Jim Hingst