Just kill me now! Roland issues again!

[flyinhawaiian968]

Well, can't seem to save my arse today if my life depended on it! Been trying to get a file to print since last week for a sign we're doing (along with a bunch of other stuff for my client, this whole job has been a nightmare!) and for the life of me, I can't get this machine to print properly!

I've tried sending it as a jpeg, a tiff and even an eps file, yet it just won't print it! With the tiff at full size (48.6" X 121.5"), it feeds about 2 feet of vinyl out before I get annoyed and cancel the print job. It never prints, it just keeps feeding vinyl out! As for the eps, the colors have shifted so much that its unusable, so that's not gonna work! I've finally gotten it to print by resizing it down to 50% and letting Versaworks to size it back up, the file is now only 42mb, plenty small enough for vworks to rip through it in seconds! What does it do? See the attached image, that's what it did at almost the end of a 10 foot print job!

I really need a shot of !!!


Waiting to hear back from Roland on this issue, at least they are helpful so far and are trying to figure the situation out as I type. I have to say that so far I'm impressed with their tech support. No waiting, right through to a tech, and as soon as I uploaded the files, they were on it and working to replicate the issue! We'll see if I ever get this ugly-ass sign done. I think the design gods decided it was just too ugly (customer-designed sign) and have cursed my machine to never print properly again!

Chris

 

[zmatalucci]

what was the file designed in, and who designed it?

 

[flyinhawaiian968]

Customer made a billion changes to colors and fonts, which resulted in that "thing" above.

Design was initially done in Corel, with manipulation in Photoshop. Tech at Roland was extremely nice and pretty knowledgable, and we sorta reproduced the issue on his machine, but because of time constraints with this job, and me being, well, me, I just kept sending versions of it until it printed!

Got it to run by converting EVERYTHING to CMYK in photoshop, resaving, resizing, resaving another time, and sending to VW.

Of course, colors shifted as it usually does, but not enough to scrap it and start over.

What really pisses me off is that everything was already done in CMYK (chose exact colors from my printed color guide on 3651), but Corel would not export it as an eps!. It was an extremely simple file too, with only that horrible 100dpi photo (also tried it as RGB and CMYK when exporting, no change) being the only weird object! No powerclips, no fonts, every element was a cmyk-specified "curve".

For some reason, CMYK tiff from corel wouldn't work either, so rgb it was! Opened in VW, printed 8 of the 10 feet properly, then puked on that last 2 feet.

Opened in photoshop and did a save-as, changing nothing at all, resulted in similar, but not exact, issue when printing. Opened again in PS, converted to CMYK, saved it off and voila! Printed just fine! Now if I can just get the bottom section to print tomorrow, I may get this job done for client and collect what's left of my profit.

Yeah, I know, there's plenty enough profit left over, but it still pisses me off when I waste 80 bucks worth of vinyl on something so simple. I'll live...

Not to bore anyone even more with my drivel, but this is a great reminder on why you should never, EVER let your customer sit down and "design" over your shoulder! Yeah, I'm an idiot for doing it, and after wasting an hour while letting him pick and choose what he wanted, and trying to talk him out of this (and that fawkin' photo he took!), I ended up going from halfway decent to absolutely horrendous! Getting a sign up on my wall at the end of this week stating that I don't allow customers to design over my shoulders, in a more professional way of course!

Chris

 

[Arstron]

This is why, before I print a large file or large peice of material I always print a reduced size (no larger then 6") version of the graphic to be sure it rips and prints properly. It has saved me several times from wasting a lot of material and ink. My monitor is also real crappy, true orange and red look the same, as well as purple and blue, so I can be sure the colors are correct as well.

 

[flyinhawaiian968]

Yeah, and that one printed just fine at 12" wide. I know this machine and rip well enough to test colors and print quality at a reduced size, and pretty sure anyone who owns a printer/cutter does the same...

 

[Graphix Plus Ink]

Option 1. Import your Corel file into Illustrator as they both are Vector Based programs it will work if you select import NOT OPEN, import.
Then save as a eps in Illy. This should work.

Option 2. Is to open in photoshop, then adjust contrast to make more vivid. But first save a few duplicates of different contrast settings. Flatten and save as a jpeg at 180 dpi HALF size of actually print needed. Then open in versaworks and increase to 200% and u should be also.

 

[ProWraps™]

doesnt sound anywhere near a printer issue to me. more like a software or the machine its running on issue.

 

[Graphix Plus Ink]

I agree tecdady.

Maybe he should reprint a previous job to eliminate the machine being the problem.

By the way what machine is it?

 

[flyinhawaiian968]

I guess I should have stated this initially, this post was really more of a rant than anything else.

I've printed the job correctly and laminating in a few minutes. Roland tech support has been stellar and has been able to reproduce the issue on their own machine but NOT fix the problem. I've already found a workaround and completed the printing, and its DEFINITELY a Versaworks issue with RGB and upsizing on large prints. If/when I hear back from them with either a fix or instructions on eliminating the problem, I'll definitely post.

So, its NOT the computer, its NOT the printer, it is NOT Corel Draw's export as RGB Tiff, it is NOT Photoshop's save as RGB Tiff, it IS Versaworks handling RGB Tiffs that are 50% in size and scaled to 200% OR fit to width of media (in this case, print was 48.60", media was 48.68", which worked out well for fit to media).

It is also NOT Versaworks profile or any settings, as we both changed settings and used different profiles with no change. It printed fine on Roland's machine at 100% size, but as soon as it was blown up to 200% it would act strange.

 

[DPD]

I don't have a roland but I've found something similar on my Mutoh. The Mutoh has a server connection to it via something called an SEM. Every once in a while the SEM gets clogged from the server feeding the data to it and I find that unplugging the unit and letting it cool down clears up the problem. While I"m at it I unplug my network router and let that cool down also.

Don't know if it'll help but it's worth a try.

 

[P Wagner]

Dennis:
I think that you are referring to the SEH box that connects network (ethernet) to parallel data that the Mutoh Falcon printer has for it's interface. On occasion, these interface boxes do need to be reset by performing a power cycle. Most Roland printers do not use these as they have native ethernet ports.

Bob