Roland Colour Nightmare

[NateF]

I'm not much help on this topic, but we have a vs-540i with severe banding problems. The common denominator, though, is Roland's inability to do anything about it. They actually sent a tech out one in over a year. Other than that, they just keep pointing fingers - non-Roland media, static, humidity, AC line power issues, network problems - basically anything but an actual problem with their printer. Rep won't return phone calls, but expects me to keep eating yards of media that we're reprinting because of banding, and then ship samples to him at my expense.

I thought I was getting a good printer when I bought a Roland, but their customer service SUCKS!!

 

[splizaat]

Roland Support, in my experience, has been terrible. Their printers are top notch, but when it comes to issues, Roland Phone Support and the Actual Roland Service Rep have been unhelpful and side with the printer every single time. For some reason, they never think it's the printer that's the issue. We had some issues with our printer at first, that we eventually got worked out after a month or two, and now it's running non stop every day. But when we had issues, no one wanted to help on our brand new vs540i.

 

[VBFlyer]

Have you reprinted that same panel that's shifting? if so, is it shifting in the same spot? or does it change every time?

I reprinted after putting fresh inks in and running a medium cleaning. I think the whole ink system is very sensitive to things like low ink cartridges, how long the printer has been sitting without printing, and possibly even barometric pressure. If your ink cartridges are over half full, and you run a medium cleaning cycle to really get the whole system primed up it seems to print pretty consistently. I set the cleaning cycle to "by the page" so it will clean and draw ink after each large panel. This seems to work the best. If I have to stop printing and resume the next day I will do another medium cleaning cycle.
the idea being that if the printer sits for a while the ink system "relaxes" a bit and does not deliver ink as efficiently as it does when it's constantly printing.
I'm not sure how Canon does it with their printers but they are extremely stable, even over long runs. Several years ago I printed 20 5'x10' panels that made up one continuous image for a backdrop and it was consistent all the way across. Here's the final product, all mounted to gatorfoam. Here's a link to the final product. It's 100 feet long and 10' High.
https://www.facebook.com/mediaeastinc

 

[Vinyldog]

If you think it's starvation, try printing unidirectional or set it so that the carriage hesitates at the end of each run. You might also try switching to Liquecolor ink. I believe it's a lower viscosity so it may flow a little easier.