Banding only on left side of ProIII XC540

[Sticky Signs]

I recently noticed that I'm getting banding on the left (furthest from caping station) side of my printer and not the right side. I've tried several different medias and it seems pretty consistent. I've also used different profiles including the RIPC and the non-RIPC. The later has better results but it's still there. Of course it's not noticeable on all my prints due to varying color etc, but I have a job to do with a solid orange and solid red back ground and it looks like crap. I called the tech and he's a little confused at this point and won't be able to see me for at least a week.
Has anyone had this problem before? What's causing it? How do I fix it? Any advice would be helpfull.

 

[J Hill Designs]

either encoder strip dirty over there, or adhesive on the rollers...thats my guess

 

[Sticky Signs]

Oh, yeah, forgot to mention I did the whole maintenance thing too. Including the roller and encoder strip.

 

[J Hill Designs]

you going uni or bi?

 

[Sticky Signs]

bi

 

[J Hill Designs]

you do a bidi alignment thingy?

 

[Jack Knight1979]

any photos. depending on how many passes I do on certain jobs. I will get starvation on the left side of the platen. Corrected by dampers or the ever painful new head.

I've never had this problem from an encoding strip, but many times from starvation.

If you stop the job mid print and do a test print do you have dropped nozzles?
IF the test print is good you certainly have some type of encoding or alignment issue.

If the problem points to the head start a recovery on it. New dampers cleaning, etc.

 

[jfiscus]

The encoder strip would give errors and bad printign all over & eventually disconnect errors; not just banding, sounds like ink starvation to me also, but never encountered it personally.

 

[Sticky Signs]

Everything is aligned and clean and as it should be. I've only ever had one minor head strike with this printer and that was over 2 years ago. I generally get great print results on all kinds of media. I just finished printing a 25'x25' floor graphic (4 tiles)with a wood/burle tile pattern. It looks great and shows no signs of banding however, I'm sure that if I try and run the "orange" print again, I will get crappy results. I will look into the ink starvation theory though. thanks

 

[jfiscus]

could it be an air pressure/pump issue?

 

[Compilla]

What about the heaters. Is one side of the printer less hot then the other side?

 

[Jeff South Florida]

I know on the mutoh you can to have the head the full width of the machine or as wide as the job. When printing in job mode you can get banding on the left side. The left side has less time to dry between passes than thethe right. I think you can change this on the Roland.