Blacks not printing black

[toomeycustoms]

Using a Roland SC-545 and the blacks seem to be printing out washed out, almost a dark grey. I've tried adjusting the black level in Versaworks and it helps a little, but still does not give a crisp black. I'm using Oracal 3165 and 3651 with Oracal's profiles. I've tried to adjust the black in the profiles to 100%, but see no difference. Any suggestions?

 

[J Hill Designs]

what are you using as your black? I use 30/30/30/100 for a nice rich black

 

[housemusikid]

I use 80/50/50/100 for a rich black.

 

[toomeycustoms]

Hmm, I just checked and it was 0/0/0/100. I'll give those 2 combo's a shot and see how they print. I assumed the darkest black would be 100% K.

 

[SightLine]

Hmm, I just checked and it was 0/0/0/100. I'll give those 2 combo's a shot and see how they print. I assumed the darkest black would be 100% K.

One other is if you are designing in RGB - then use 0,0,0.

 

[Wheeler]

Use the Roland color system Library and use BK21.

 

[Sign Works]

I found that when using the Oracal 3651 profile RGB black prints a very solid black.

 

[eye4clr]

http://pacificprintworks.com/file-preparation-tips/defining-black/

Hope this helps.

 

[Gforce1]

30/30/30/100 has been the best option I've found on our XC. Can't say for the VS as we've only had it a week and so far I am not liking it at all.

 

[toomeycustoms]

I spent about 8 hours on Saturday trying to get my machine dialed in. I was having the worst time with prints coming out grainy. What was weird is if I printed a photograph, the print looked great. But if I printed a simple 2 color vector image the print was grainy. I finally narrowed it down to the head speed setting. The default is 900mm and when I lower it down to around 500, the blacks and rest of the vector image come out great. The only problem is it prints slower.

Thanks for all your guys help. And thanks eye4clr for the link. Great info there.

 

[HulkSmash]

Are you by any chance designing the vector in illustrator, then importing to flexi? If so .. the blacks are not black. they import as a dark grey. Ungroup it in flexi and select all the black and manually change it in flexi if this is the issue.

 

[Salmoneye]

It sounds like you are picking a color swatch from the CMYK pallet, pick it from your RGB pallet. Also, if you are using Illustrator there is a setting in preferences on how to display blacks on your monitor so that you will see on screen when you are dealing with a grayish CMYK black or a rich RGB type black. Embarrassingly, it took me an awfully long time to figure this one out, I thought that it was just as good as it got.

 

[toomeycustoms]

I am using Illustrator and Versaworks and the Roland color library. I was choosing BK 21 and BK 22 as my blacks and I also created some black boxes with all the different combos of black suggested here, but they still printed grainy. Reducing the head speed has solved the issue.