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Are these results typical for UV prints?

Brian27

New Member
Assuming everything is working properly and profiles are in order, are prints like these what you'd expect from most UV flatbed printers when using darker solid colors?
 

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AlsEU

New Member
UV lamps may have different time of work. Try to print the same file unidirectionally (with just one lamp) and check the difference. Also you may play with power of both lamps, sometimes it's possible to get more unique solids.
 

Morkel

New Member
Two suggestions:

* As above, try printing uni-direction. We've found that printing bi-direction leaves stepped areas of a different sheen.

* Is the colour made purely of black ink? We've found that using a pure ink does give quite noticeable banding, especially in dark greys. If you have your profile set to preserving pure ink colours, turn this off so that it throws a bit of other colours in there to smooth it out.
 

fastmax

New Member
can you print out your color test, and bi directional test

flatbeds bi directional especially gets thrown off easily
 

ChrisN

New Member
No, my printer makes very nice solid colors. The banding you're getting is perpendicular to the head travel, so that would rule out bad lamps, sticking shutters, missing nozzles, or ink starvation since the banding is the wrong direction. What would cause banding in that direction could be a bad encoder or encoder reader, or even a wavy bed.
 

Brian27

New Member
To answer all your questions:

-Those are print uni-directionally as are all our prints. When we print bi-directionally the banding is the same and matches with uni prints and the bi-directional calibration is spot on. The head calibration is as well.
-I've tried printing with one lamp by unplugging it (no option to turn it off) and while it does help the banding, it's still there but I think it's just masked because the entire print is more glossy because it isn't cured quite right. They're LED lamps so there is no option to reduce or increase power. =/
-That is a composite black. RGB (0,0,0) and I've actually found the opposite. Printing with pure K actually improves the banding.
-The linear encoder and reader was replaced also.

This has actually been an ongoing issue since I got the printer new. I was more so just wanting to make sure I didn't have unreasonably high expectations for what UV printers can produce.
 

djinnerman

New Member
Surprised you're not working in CMYK with Rich Blacks, 60,40,40,100.

But are you printing RGB on CMYK? Maybe I'm missing something.

Either way, what quality are you using? We have the GerberCatUV and depending on the substrate and the quality/speed, it makes a difference. Production vs quality uni makes a huge difference.
 

Gino

Premium Subscriber
You said, since you got the machine, but how long is that ??

What mode are you printing in ?? In other words.... speed/passes.
How do you know you are using the correct profiles ??
What substrates are you using ??


No, that does not look acceptable for any machine printing on any substrate.
 
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