Need Help Color Nightmare

[Bryce I]

We've been dealing with an issue with our Roland TrueVis VG-540 pretty much since we bought it. We can't get it to print a deep popping red. (pr42k). it always comes out an unattractive pinkish. Even when we print out the Roland Color Chart, it goes from dull copper to pink, with no firetruck red to be found on the chart.
I feel like I've clicked every box in Versa's quality, file format and color adjusment tabs, with little posityive results. We've been able to get there on a few specific jobs by editing tone curves, and screwing with contrast and brightness, but that doesn't feel like a long term solution. Our tech was just here replacing cap tops and he was stumped. Any thoughts or insights would be greatly appreciated.
-B

 

[Solventinkjet]

If your tech was out there and thinks the printer is functioning properly, i.e. no missing nozzles or drop out during prints, you need to make a custom profile if you want to reach the full potential of your machine's gamut. You can either buy the equipment and do it yourself or hire someone to do it. I think there are some merchant members on here who offer that service.

If that's something you can't afford right now, I'd just go find as many canned profiles I can for that machine and try them all to see which one prints the best red.

 

[Bryce I]

Thanks, I'll look into building some profiles. In the meantime, I have a bunch of downloaded profiles from rolanddga site (1 specific for each media we use) are there other places to get canned profiles?

 

[Solventinkjet]

Thanks, I'll look into building some profiles. In the meantime, I have a bunch of downloaded profiles from rolanddga site (1 specific for each media we use) are there other places to get canned profiles?

Go to your vinyl manufacturer's website. They will usually have some more profiles for you to use.

 

[Bryce I]

Thank you Solventinkjet! downloading some arlon and orafol profiles now. As far as creating our own profiles, where do I begin? Is it better to invest in erqupment and do it ourselves, or hire someone to do it? If hiring out, I assume someone would need to come here to work on it? We're a few hourds from the nearest city...

 

[Patentagosse]

Don't throw me rocks but as a long time Roland user (SP300 in 2004 to 2011 where I bought my VS540 and newly upgrade to VG2540) it's the 1st time a get spot on colors from files (mines or customers supplied). When I first tested it in December, I also tried all mfg's own profiles (3M, Avey, Oracal...) but for the best results, I keep on going back to GenericVinyl2 (my vivid blue, cardinal red, orange, grass green have never been so good... and I'm picky on colors).

YES it's the new VG2 with CMYK LC LM LB O inkset. My point is: sometimes the vinyl mfg profiles are not THAT GOOD...

 

[Joe House]

YES it's the new VG2 with CMYK LC LM LB O inkset. My point is: sometimes the vinyl mfg profiles are not THAT GOOD...

What you're talking about here is that the person who profiles the Roland Generics is VERY good with building profiles for the Roland printers. Your idea of "good", in this case, memory colors may be different from someone else's idea of "good" which could mean color accuracy - matching a specified color with less than 2 dE. I suspect that a generic profile is not built with the idea of color accuracy since it's intended to be used on a wide range of substrates, but to provide good performance on a wide variety of substrates with good vivid colors.

Thank you Solventinkjet! downloading some arlon and orafol profiles now. As far as creating our own profiles, where do I begin? Is it better to invest in erqupment and do it ourselves, or hire someone to do it? If hiring out, I assume someone would need to come here to work on it? We're a few hourds from the nearest city...

Bryce, if you're patient and willing to learn, I think your best option would be to get the equipment and take a class on creating profiles. Right now there are some pretty good online options for learning to profile. Check out https://colorcasters.com/ for one that I'm aware of. Trying to go at it yourself without any training will be pretty frustrating I think.

Good luck!