Greg Mackinlay
New Member
Hi everyone,
I'm from Zimbabwe and i've been in the printing and packaging industry for nearly 14 years. Here's my experiences with our Roland SP-540i.
This is going to be a bit of an essay, but the stories long.
in 2008 we bought a SP-540i, the machine worked flawlessly for about 3 years. We use a bulk inking system and an eco-solvent ink from South Korea, we've been using it forever and haven't had any issues with it (aside from colour variances, more or that later).
Anyway, one fateful day the operator of the machine topped the cartridges up with ink for one of our other machines (aqueous nano-resin ultrachrome). The reaction between that and the eco-solvent created a sludge that went hard overnight, and the machine was dead (dampers, heads, caps, and the pump too)
So we called a Roland certified technician, however, this dude was simply no good. over the space of 6 months, he swapped the main board, power board and servo board out for ones from his clients that were non-functional (and left us with the dud parts) in addition he let a whole bunch of the covers and parts of the machine sit in a tray that had a puddle of eco-solvent in it. so those parts got liquefied.
We complained to Roland about the guy, and nothing was done. We couldn't work with them any longer, so we had to work out our own solution. Dealing with the local agent bascially cost us 18 months of down time on the machine.
Our IT guy did some reading, we managed to source some boards and heads, and we managed to clear the plumbing on the machine. The machine was up and running in about 3 months.
Since then the machine has logged around 3182 hours (i think it should be a lot more, the counter may have been reset)
The machines starting to run into end of life of some of its parts, and the operator who was using it, really didn't give the machine the care it needed, and as a result theres multiple things going on with it.
The local Roland agents position is unchanged, so its now down to me to get the machine up and running in as good a state as is possible.
here are some parts I've had to replace, and some plans I've had to make.
Parts replaced:
Scan motor
Pump (twice)
wiper motor (and the carriage,i basically had to rebuild the whole assembly)
heads (thrice)
encoder
all the bearings in the scan assembly
head cables (twice)
various boards
Parts cobbled together:
LED lighting inside the shroud to make it easier to see work as it prints
the plumbing from the main lines to the dampers (they were old and hard, and there was an air leak)
Intergrated a cooling fan into the back of the machine (it gets pretty hot here)
Repainted a lot of the body panels (The Roland techie got solvent all over them and that took the paint off)
It should also be said, that I've not had any Roland training, all i've learnt about the machine is from the school of painful expensive knocks.
I'm from Zimbabwe and i've been in the printing and packaging industry for nearly 14 years. Here's my experiences with our Roland SP-540i.
This is going to be a bit of an essay, but the stories long.
in 2008 we bought a SP-540i, the machine worked flawlessly for about 3 years. We use a bulk inking system and an eco-solvent ink from South Korea, we've been using it forever and haven't had any issues with it (aside from colour variances, more or that later).
Anyway, one fateful day the operator of the machine topped the cartridges up with ink for one of our other machines (aqueous nano-resin ultrachrome). The reaction between that and the eco-solvent created a sludge that went hard overnight, and the machine was dead (dampers, heads, caps, and the pump too)
So we called a Roland certified technician, however, this dude was simply no good. over the space of 6 months, he swapped the main board, power board and servo board out for ones from his clients that were non-functional (and left us with the dud parts) in addition he let a whole bunch of the covers and parts of the machine sit in a tray that had a puddle of eco-solvent in it. so those parts got liquefied.
We complained to Roland about the guy, and nothing was done. We couldn't work with them any longer, so we had to work out our own solution. Dealing with the local agent bascially cost us 18 months of down time on the machine.
Our IT guy did some reading, we managed to source some boards and heads, and we managed to clear the plumbing on the machine. The machine was up and running in about 3 months.
Since then the machine has logged around 3182 hours (i think it should be a lot more, the counter may have been reset)
The machines starting to run into end of life of some of its parts, and the operator who was using it, really didn't give the machine the care it needed, and as a result theres multiple things going on with it.
The local Roland agents position is unchanged, so its now down to me to get the machine up and running in as good a state as is possible.
here are some parts I've had to replace, and some plans I've had to make.
Parts replaced:
Scan motor
Pump (twice)
wiper motor (and the carriage,i basically had to rebuild the whole assembly)
heads (thrice)
encoder
all the bearings in the scan assembly
head cables (twice)
various boards
Parts cobbled together:
LED lighting inside the shroud to make it easier to see work as it prints
the plumbing from the main lines to the dampers (they were old and hard, and there was an air leak)
Intergrated a cooling fan into the back of the machine (it gets pretty hot here)
Repainted a lot of the body panels (The Roland techie got solvent all over them and that took the paint off)
It should also be said, that I've not had any Roland training, all i've learnt about the machine is from the school of painful expensive knocks.
I had it apart this afternoon and cleaned it out, gonna try and find a USB to Serial converter, and make some of my own media profiles
2 
from OK 
