Roland SC-500 Printer (Grainy)

[waitia]

Hi,

We have a Roland SC-500 printer, using Roland ColorChoice 4.5 v2 on a Windows XP machine with 256mb of ram.

I was playing around yesterday trying out different profiles and I couldn't get rid of the grainy dithering in the prints. I've seen this type of printer on youtube doing some lovely prints and was wondering why this one isn't.

We normally print on glossy vinyl on a role, and sometimes heavy duty banner materials. The banner materials seem to absorb the ink better, but you can still see some graininess in the print.

When I was testing out different profiles some of them looked like the areas were cracked. Some of the solid colours were no longer solid but had other colours mixed in, I wouldn't expect to see so much red mixed in with the blue.
Also, when I was doing different patches, with different profiles I noticed that the ink was smudging on the text so it has little lines going off of it.

When I was printing with one profile, I changed the settings from Normal through to Super and Photo, the ink was just placed on thicker, it still had the graininess.
The black seemed to be very thick and layered heavily compared to the rest of the colours too.




Other factors:
The room isn't heated constantly.
Before we print we turn on a heater, which warms the room within 10 minuets.
We do have a heat plate, but if it goes past 30 degrees it buckles the vinyl.

I would appreciate any suggestions you might have!

 

[FrankW]

Try to print unidirectional. If this helps it could be that the bidirectional printing is not adjusted properly.

 

[waitia]

Try to print unidirectional. If this helps it could be that the bidirectional printing is not adjusted properly.

I tried both Bi and Uni directional, on the ColorChoice program, under the driver options. I can't see any difference between the two when lined up.

We did have is serviced a few weeks ago, when the heads went out of alignment and the guy said it was in really good condition for its age. But it was still printing grainy like this, either he didn't notice, or he didn't know what he was doing.

 

[Red/Black86]

I tried both Bi and Uni directional, on the ColorChoice program, under the driver options. I can't see any difference between the two when lined up.

We did have is serviced a few weeks ago, when the heads went out of alignment and the guy said it was in really good condition for its age. But it was still printing grainy like this, either he didn't notice, or he didn't know what he was doing.

was this problem ever solved?? im having the same problem with my sc500 and colour choice.

 

[lodcomm]

Hey Folks,

When I first got my sc500 up and running I was having problems similar to what you are having. Weird looking grain, pooling, etc..I first started with flexi-10 - using the stock/basic ICC profiles that came with it. I had very little luck getting anything to print clearly (grainy), etc.. - A helpful user here sent me a custom ICC profile designed specifically for the nazdar 2000 inks that I was using, however Flexi-10 refused to load it.. Griping that it was "incompatible". I downgraded to flexi 8, which loaded the profile and with a bit of ink limit tweaking I was able to get pretty decent prints. However the Biggest thing I did, was to re-design how the heating tapes were laid out on my sc500, and used a IR thermometer to make sure the temps at the print areas were where they were supposed to be. (in my case 110 degrees for the nazdar). Once I got those things straightened out I was able to get the printer to lay ink nicely and reliably.Here are the old threads covering my experiences:

Grainy Printing post

Sc500 Print quality notes thread



-t