Colour Conundrum??

[niksagkram]

Hi. Here's a brain tickler. Just finished printing a 24"x 96" print on 54" Oracal 3850 translucent on my XC-540. I need 2 of them so just increased quantity to 2 in Versaworks. So far so good. Prints finished, and I am removing them from the printer, and had to take a step back. The colours (dk green to green gradient) where slightly different!! How does that happen? It's the same file, with the same settings printed at the same time. And it's not my eyes. I asked two others to look at them, without saying why, and they both said the same thing. Now, in the scheme of things, it probably won't matter, they are for a double sided pylon sign, so the customer probably won't notice, but it still bothers me that this can happen.

Anybody had this happen to them, or know why it might happen?

Thanks,

Mark.

 

[Solventinkjet]

Small inconsistencies are expected but it sounds like yours if off quite a bit. Next time the heaters heat up, feel both sides of the platen(back and front of machine) to see if there is a big difference. If one side is much hotter or colder than the other, that would most likely be the problem.

 

[Vinyldog]

run a nozzle check and see if black is dropped out gradually. Many times when my printer would do this the nozzle-check would be fine after it sat idle for a few minutes, but if I looked at the prints closely I could see where black was slowly dropping out as it printed.

 

[Solventinkjet]

run a nozzle check and see if black is dropped out gradually. Many times when my printer would do this the nozzle-check would be fine after it sat idle for a few minutes, but if I looked at the prints closely I could see where black was slowly dropping out as it printed.

Change the dampers and o-rings. Also, make sure the ink cartridge is still full.

 

[niksagkram]

Small inconsistencies are expected but it sounds like yours if off quite a bit. Next time the heaters heat up, feel both sides of the platen(back and front of machine) to see if there is a big difference. If one side is much hotter or colder than the other, that would most likely be the problem.

The heater was my first thought too, but I can feel no differences across the printer front or back.

 

[TXFB.INS]

is it across all material or only this job?
Could it be a contaminated roll?

 

[niksagkram]

Ink cartridges are all full or near full, nozzle test is perfect, before and after the print. I'm not convinced it's a printer issue, if it was, colour inconsistencies would should up across both copies of the print, would they not? Other than the colour being slightly off between the two side by side prints, I have no problems with the print quality itself. No drop outs, or banding. If they were separate jobs, they would be perfect, but it is the same file duplicated in Versaworks.

Mark

 

[niksagkram]

is it across all material or only this job?
Could it be a contaminated roll?

So far, as far as I can tell, just this job. I have another, similar job to print tomorrow, so I will watch that one closely.