Print ( GREY ) without spot color ?

2 things come to mind...
1. Your profile is designed for viewing outdoors and you're viewing them under fluorescent light. Try viewing your greys outside and see if the change in lighting improves the gray.
2. You need to linearize your profile. This will balance out your CMY levels to be more neutral. This, however requires a spectrophotometer.

 

What does a print head test look like?

 

Hmm, clean enough for accurate prints.
We used to have this issue a lot with our VS-540, even after multiple profile calibrations.

Can you try doing a test print using Density Control Only and see how that looks?

 

You are missing/ deflecting a fairly significant number of nozzles in the LC. That may be enough to reduce the density of that ink and shift neutrals warm - LC is used extensively when printing gray tones. Re-linearizing might bring you back to neutral. With Roland equipment that task will require an external measurement instrument (spectrophotometer).

 

File is CMYK or RGB? Is there a Limit black to black channel only in the rip software?

 

Because its so warm on your output....I would lean more towards a file or RIP issue vs a mechanical or PH issue. Have you updated the SW recently or changed something in there? Thats all I can come up with....the file being a CMYK build is another.

 

Why can't you use spot color for gradient? What software are you creating in?

 

How about using PMS Black? That takes the color directly to the Lab side of your rip vs thru the profile you have there I believe. You should also have the ability to override the CMYK values within the rip software to make tweaks of %'s to your CMYKs. I don't see how using a PMS or spot would create a hard line unless you are using raster gradient vs linear vector based.

 

Cyan doesn't turn prints pink or warm. UNLESS your Cyan or LC PH isnt firing correctly.

 

It appears you have all your nozzles back. The cyan overspray would point to the cyan or light cyan channel is possibly starting to fail. I would suggest printing the fill test in service mode. It is here - service mode-print menu-test pattern-fill. This test prints each channel at a middle setting, i.e., a middle resolution, pass count, speed setting, etc., and works the print head. Carefully watch the entire time it prints, watching for missing areas that may eventually be covered by subsequent passes. Also, watch both sides of the print as it prints, looking for overspray and uneven edges while printing, which may also get covered up by following passes. Immediately after printing this, print the nozzle test print and see if there are any changes. Depending upon the results of this test, I would not rule out a bad damper. Please post your results...