Roland VP-540 and 20/20 Color brand ink

[graywoulf]

Greetings all,

The owners of the company I work for started buying this discount price ink for our VP-540 back at the first of the year. Since then I have noticed that over a long period of time that the quality of the prints were changing and not in a good way either. Mainly, the colors have changed and the print quality is terrible even in the High Quality setting with Max Density on as well. As of now, if I do the test print from within the cleaning selection, the colors black, magenta, cyan have a lot of dropout but the color yellow only prints about half of the test swatch. Also I am getting different readings of ink level from between the VersaWorks software and the display on the 540 itself. So having said all of that, have or do any of you use this brand of ink or know of any issues that you have heard of about using it? I will really appreciate any and all feedback I can get on this subject.

 

[rushworks graphics]

we have a vp540i and have had it for a year now. i won't ever change from oem ink. i've heard good things about 3rd party ink and bad things.
way i see it is this, roland spend x amount on millions of $ in r and d on these printers and inks, so why mess with it! sure you may over the course of a month save a few bucks in ink costs, depending on how much ink you use. however, as you have pointed out above, is it worth the risk getting bad prints which if your customers come back and complain about you'll have to redo again! theres your ink savings gone!
i'd tell your boss that oem maybe the way to go as your getting bad results with this cheap ink.

 

[graywoulf]

In total agreement

I am in total agreement with you rushworks. But I am dealing with someone who is penny wise and most definitely pound foolish. The VP-540 was just serviced by a factory trained technician who did an excellent job of getting the machine in good working order but did nothing to help me confirm that the crappy ink was doing us no favors at all. The six cents or so saved per square foot of printing is NOT worth it in my book. But I am sure that my boss will continue to use the aftermarket brand anyway now.