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Printing Black on a Roland SC545

A

allegraasheville

New Member
Hi everyone, first post.
I have an older Roland SC545EX that has been a great machine for us. I know about the reddish/greenish black issue, and have struggled with both at times.
I also know that if I'm printing a "black and white" image, I can grayscale it and print using Density Control only/Calibration and Ink Limit -which gives me just black ink instead of Roland's mixture of all to make "black". I have used this to pretty good success in the past, but say that "black and white" image has some red text running through it, and now I'm outta luck. How do you get around this?

To make it worse, my customer has "his old printer" who never had a problem with the b/w files. -And honestly, I think he's right. Is the reddish/greenish black printing thing unique to Roland or do the Mutoh/Mimaki/other printers have the same issue?

This is a great forum, and I'm glad to be part. Thanks!
 
P Wagner

P Wagner

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To the OP:

When you refer to printing 'black' I would assume that you are referring to grayscale (achromatic) images and gradients.

Using the Versaworks Color Management setting 'Density Control Only' is Roland's term for turning off ICC Profiles and color correction. For grayscale images, this setting forces the RIP to use only the K channel of ink. It also tends to cause more banded output, depending on the nozzle performance of the printhead(s) that are firing the K ink. If the nozzle performance is not close to perfect (literally no misdirected or blocked nozzles), you will be trading one print artifact (non-neutral grays) for another (banding).

I have heard people over the years claim that their manufacturer of machine is incapable of printing neutral grays. That is complete nonsense. All printers are perfectly capable of producing virtually perfect neutral grayscale output, including Roland, Mimaki, Mutoh, HP, Seiko, Epson, Canon, EFI etc.

Printing grays that look gray can be a challenge, but it is perfectly doable on any printer, with a properly configured workflow. Here are the milestone building blocks for any RIP-based color printer to achieve this:

1. Chroma/ Density Balanced individual channel ink limits
2. Linearize (calibrate) the individual channels
3. Limit the ink combinations (across multi-channels)
4. Use an accurate ICC Profile built for the media

Clearly these steps involve work, and in my experience, many users are looking for a magic 'Easy' button to avoid the work, yet reap it's rewards. I know of no such button, but the amount of money, work and effort to get there is entirely reasonable and justifiable from an ROI standpoint.

Happy printing.
 
A

allegraasheville

New Member
Hi Castek, thanks for the reply.
Yes, I'm referring to printing "black and white-looking" images. 99% of what I receive comes in as RGB, and as far as I know, all is good... other than what photoshop edits the customer may have done, or what website they steal the image from... I get a lot of that junk. Sometimes I have a grayscale image with colored text or other artwork with it. This is where I'd need to have my machine working perfectly so the b/w is neutral and the colors are accurate.
I'll be honest and say I'm only using about 20% of what my VersaWorks software can do. I know how to put ink on vinyl and make a nice looking print, but beyond that, I'm pretty green. In my mind, as long as I have the vinyl manufacturer's profile all should be good. I know there's way more to it than that.
I'd like to really know my machine and learn the color/profile/Chroma/Linearize aspects and how they can make my final product better.
The only problem is that I know nothing about the first 3 things you posted. If these are milestones, then I need to know them.
Can you help?
 
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