We own the same machine and there are just certain colors on an ION that it doesn't matter how you clean the panels. Its in the built in profiles and inherent weaknesses of how certain colors are built and how the ION's distribute the ink. Our Gerber tech sees it across the board with the Solara ION's. Believe me, we've bent his ear for hours on the subject.
A work around I've found when grays and other troublesome colors are involved on the vast majority of the print is to run them twice at a quicker setting 360/2 or 4 pass UNI with all the colors dialed back to anywhere between 50-80% opacity. We only do this on jobs monetarily worth it or for outstanding customers deserving of the extra time, little bit of ink and effort. We just did 50x 18"x24" double sided real estate signs for a regular customer that uses a chrome yellow background and bright red logo and text. When the old owner here used to run them on the single 360/8 pass uni setting, the yellow would look as if they had already been out in the sun for a year right off the printer. The red would be red but lacked any real punch. The whole sign just looked pale compared to how it should have looked. And it would take about 40 minutes to run a whole sheet per side. So he would have an hour and twenty minutes of printing to do both sides of one sheet that way. Even running them twice at 360/4 pass uni only takes a half hour per side. So I shaved 20 minutes off a double sided sheet and the product looks vastly more solid and intense.
When I took over and got the first order from this customer, I dialed back the yellow and red to 80% opacity and started running them twice at 360/4 pass uni. It has added maybe an extra hour and a half of print time total for 50x and a bit more ink, but the realtors noticed the added depth of color IMMEDIATELY and have referred us to even other realtors who have started using us instead of paying more for the competitors still printing/laminating and mounting, so its all good. For a $950 job with under $100 in coroplast and a single 10up file produced years ago, I feel like a little extra ink and time is worth it for such a loyal customer.
Our cleaning regimen is this. First, it starts with ordering the UltraSmooth type of coroplast. It's worth the extra dollar or two to have the treated panels, especially when we know we've got a job with any troublesome colors in large areas. We still use 99% Isopropanol as Denco calls it and as per Artbot's suggestion many moons ago, Kimberly-Clark, lint-free, WypAll L30 Wipes. Regular household brand paper towels We liberally saturate a wipe and with as flat of a hand and even pressure as possible we wipe in the direction of the flutes from one end to the other in smooth, even passes. The second pass is done as the wipe is starting to dry but in the other hand a clean, dry wipe follows up the wet wipe and everything is wiped until dry.
We don't have many issues with static. Our area has a low but steady range of 20-40% humidity. The shop floor here has the plastic, anti-static tiles that I assume Gerber and other printer manufacturers sell because I've seen them in commercial printshops also. When we print on Styrene, Acrylic, Sintra or other static prone substrates, I take a barely damp with water wipe and place it on one of the far corners of the substrate that isn't being printed if possible. It acts like a magnet for any static that builds up during the printing process. You just have to remember to pull it off as the gantry starts approaching it.
