Banding Question

[myersvinyldesigns]

Let me start off by saying that I do not have a banding problem with my machine, but see banding all over the place in prints. I just want to see what the majority of you all think.

I have ordered prints from merchant members, and there is banding that I can see, but apparently the average customer cannot. It looks to me like a printer that needs a head cleaning. I was doing some custom graphics for a boat and the guy wanted me to match the graphic already there. It was obviously digitally printed laminated vinyl and clear as day there was banding. Once I pointed it out, the guy could see it, but said he never saw it before. When I printed the graphics and he compared them, the banding was even more apparent. And I am talking about banding in all colors, even black.

I print with a Roland BN-20 which is a slow machine, but the output has NEVER had a band in it. I would have flipped had it been banding.

Is this standard? Is it the result of the machine being on a high speed setting? Is it a particular brand? One of the other local shops has a MUTOH and I can see banding in everything they print. Is it purely a quality control issue?

Or.... Am I just too picky?

 

[J Hill Designs]

I think it's that the other shops aren't picky enough

 

[mudmedia]

I am in the same boat with you. On good days my machine doesnt band but when I see it I get angry. I am really anal about my prints and unfortunately everyone I have talked to seems to think its a industry standard and little banding is ok.

I print everything on a good quality 8 pass sometimes 16 pass just so I do not see banding. Even on banners if I see it I reprint so maybe it is just us but I think there are a lot of guys who own shops here that care about their quality because that is our "selling point" compared to vistaprint or those that do not care and ship it out the door.

 

[SightLine]

Ignorance is bliss..... do not point it out. That being said, I'm picky as well and obvious visible banding is not acceptable. I think the newer generation machines seem to deal with it better. Our JV33 rarely gets any so we almost never have to adjust the feed comp. On our older JV3 we had to adjust feed comp pretty often to eliminate banding.

 

[ForgeInc]

To me, I see it as one of the many things that sets a quality large format shop apart from a "bang it out" shop. We deal with banding quite a bit and are very particular about the quality of prints we put out. That said, there are all types of banding we get to deal with in our industry.

When we first opened, I was about to poke my eyes out with a sharp stick if I couldn't figure out how we kept getting visible banding in certain colors of gradients. Turns out that time it was an issue with Onyx. Once we switched rips - no more banding in gradients.

You can sometimes fix visible banding in gradients by adding a slight bit of noise, though didn't work with us.

Then we had to deal with banding on our flatbed prints, called cure banding. Many reasons this can show up - turns out ours was mostly caused by the UV lights. You can adjust this with print speeds, adjusting shutters, etc. Then there are other sorts of visible ink banding caused by nozzles, ink restrictions, heaters set too high...etc.

Figuring out to minimize it not only helps you look better (sometimes laminating makes it go away completely) but can allow you to sell at a higher price point too as long as your customers are educated on the difference.

 

[SIROD]

Hello,

Banding'd be due to a lot of factors:

1.- Printer & settings -> for instance in a Roland you have to set up your plotter calibration advance or you could get white or black banding

2.- Manteinance -> even whith a right set up of your machine if there is some dirt at the bottom/sides of your printhead, banding could appears

3.- Print Speed -> for higher speeds the feed pass is wider and the banding is more visible

4.- Printer technology -> as it was said before some UV printers could present a sort of banding issue due to the way its lamps dries the ink (this is not banding but a small, or big, glossy diference between pass)

5.- Rip software -> if you can change some speed parameters (like feed or pass, depend on the rip) you can make banding dissapear

My own experience, most times with Roland and UV printers is that you have to clean the plotter, at least, once a week and calibrate it from time to time