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dark grey printing brownish

player

New Member
The black printhead problem started from a head strike about five years ago on banner material. Has printed fine since, but I always print in HQ mode. I've never changed the captops, it never showed symptoms of needing to. Have always done a manual cleaning at least once a week. Have replaced the wipers, t sponge, misting sponge etc.. a few times. The black ink was one of the first things I checked and it was getting low so I put a new one in before all this testing started. Has only ever had Roland ink in it. I will try the swab on the head Monday if the weekend head soak doesn't help.
Seems to print OK as long as there's no grey in the file.

Since greys are a mix of colors...if the black isn't putting out enough could that cause the grey to be brownish?

I would say that black head is showing you.

Cap tops seal the head. They are meant to be changed every 6 months with a Roland...
 

Tony McD

New Member
Cleaned the encoder strip again today...was one of the first things tried, and it didn't help any.

The two day head soak didn't seem to help the black clear up any.

Also tried the cleaning swab and solution on the head, and that didn't make any difference.

The missing nozzles in the black started after the head strike, but has been printing fine since.
That might be the problem, or part of it, but have never had problems with heads drying up, so
not sure changing the cap tops would actually fix it, although it probably needs them changed.

I tried a file at 80% black, and in versaworks set it to "preserve primary colors"
It did print grey, but had banding from the missing black nozzles.

Looks like I need to save up for a new head, cap tops, cut carriage cable, and dampers while I'm at it.
My biggest worry is after changing these parts, it still prints brown.

The bright side is that I quite a bit of work that's just cut vinyl and doesn't need printed.

Maybe I should just trade it in on a new one.
 

studebaker

Deluded Artist
I fixed my printing gray as brown problem by changing the (all) grays and blacks to a LAB color palette. now I get actual gray. Also, I use a Gray scale palette in Corel to pick the colors using only the K value as a percentage.
 

splizaat

New Member
Only thing I can think of at this point is a possible ICC problem.

There's NO WAY that this dramatic of a change from grey to brown overnight are due to environmental changes and the profile not compensating. You've printed this file, on this media, with this profile before and it came out fine. It's gotta be something else.
 

player

New Member
Your black head looks like it is printing less that 50%...

If the head soak did nothing then I would suspect your cap top is not sealing so when you run a cleaning the pump is not sucking out any ink. Change the cap top with a Roland OEM cap top.
 

Tony McD

New Member
thank you guys for all the help.
I will try the cap tops and see if that helps....they need replaced anyway,
and not much out of pocket compared to a print head.

I don't see it being a profile problem either.
Either the black head, cable or something.
Have also emptied three of my ink tanks from all the head cleaning.
I printed a small banner with it yesterday that was pink and black.
Did fine...but the black wasn't quit as rich as should be.
 

signpro

Manager
I was having a problem printing 100% black, and good grays...
did some digging and came up with a Roland supplied spot color that should be in your VersaWorks Swatches...

RVW-BK21A

I use that in place of 100 black in Illustrator, and that tells the printer to print ONLY black
works for grays too, that spot color at 80%, 70%, etc.
You have to go into the settings in Versaworks and chose to use that spot color, [FILE FORMAT > CONVERT SPOT COLOR> Select that color] before printing your file

but it has solved my gray/black problems ever since. (I used to have slight greenish grays/blacks before)
 

Obada

New Member
thank you guys for all the help.
I will try the cap tops and see if that helps....they need replaced anyway,
and not much out of pocket compared to a print head.

I don't see it being a profile problem either.
Either the black head, cable or something.
Have also emptied three of my ink tanks from all the head cleaning.
I printed a small banner with it yesterday that was pink and black.
Did fine...but the black wasn't quit as rich as should be.

So after all these years did you fixed your problem? i have exact problem you have, but you didnt post how you solve it if you solved.

Thanks in advance.
 
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CSOCSO

I don't hate paint, I just overlay it.
Not sure if anyone ever mentioned it but if you want perfect grey / black colors you need to design in illustrator and use roland spot colors. Also with older versaworks 5 you can not have fading colors/ transparency or rasterized layer in the design or the spot color won't work. Same when you try to do a contour cut and illustrator warns you when saving a file. Once you set up a spot color ( make sure you use the the spot color of the color fill.. not the stroke!) you can go into versaworks and select spot colors.
 
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