Arizona 550 XT Banding Issues

[iprint]

So we have had this printer for about 6 years and have always printed a majority of the time in production mode. For the past few months we have had banding issues that do not seem to be cure or nozzle related and is extremely apparent in solid colors. If we print in quality mode the issue is way less noticeable. In the past 6 months or so we have replace the ink lines and a degas module for the black ink and all of the micron filters. Any thoughts? To me it looks like ink starvation, but what would cause this? Do you think maybe worn degas modules could be the culprit? Approximately 800k sq.ft on the printer and the lamps have about 300 hours on them.

 

[CMYKENGINEERING]

Solid colors were not previously a problem or did you recently start printing more solids and the banding has become more apparent?

 

[AlsEU]

Did you replace any heads recently? When last calibrations were done? Which calibrations? If the printer is 6 years old, heads may be weaker than before, so calibrations may be required. 550 also have one calibration, which is a pain in the a** - density.
Is the banding related to any particular channel?

 

[Zendavor Signs]

Our XT 550 just died a few months ago, but I remember solid deep blues like that being problematic. I believe there is a Quality Smooth mode that helped a lot.

 

[Bly]

Quality smooth is pretty slow though.
We had a bit of banding on our 660 like that.
We had the heads calibrated recently after a head strike and quality has improved a lot.
Thats the software calibrations they do with a scanner.
Took the tech best part of a day but well worth it.
We really only use production mode on corrugated plastic though and quality on most other substrates.

 

[iprint]

Thanks for all of the input. Solid colors have never been a real issue as long as all nozzles were firing. I may have a tech out to try a calibration. I will report back when that happens.

 

[Pauly]

Looks like a density banding. Probably need a head alignment.

 

[Patrickglamb]

Sometimes banding can also be cause by ink drying on the glass plates under the UV lamp shutters, I'd check that area to be safe as well.

 

[levakbob]

Hi, I have a similar problem with Arizona 550GT. Blue color makes me the same problem. This is what my press looks like today and the service does not know much. Were you able to sort it out? Nozzle check is ok.

Thanks

 

[iprint]

In my case, I think there were a couple of factors. The cyan heads are original to the 7 yr old machine and are tired along with a vacuum issue on the ink line. We replaced the ink lines and it is better, but still have to print in quality smooth if there is a lot of solid blue. We had a tech here for 2 days trying calibrations with no success. Nozzle checks printed fine as did the ship print, but they were never able to get solid cyan to print in production mode without banding. I am guessing if I were to replace both cyan printheads my problems would disappear. Until then I will be printing in quality smooth for designs that are predominantly blue.

 

[AlsEU]

Arizona 550 requires an installation of shims, when the heads are replaced. Also one of the calibration steps is a density balance calibrations - was it done?