roland white ink your views

[woolly]

i am interested in your experiences with roland white ink.
we have been using a vs 540 with white+ met for around 7 years and still have the pain of maintenance of the white ink, the silver has never been a problem.
the first white ink was at best just adequate and required reasonable maintenance to keep working then the eco white max2 came along which roland forced the change maintenance nightmare was now a big problem, even a weekend without attention was enough to result in a clogged print head.
changing back to roland oe cap tops, and very careful attention to the sealing helped but not a real fix.
so do those with the VSi machines suffer the same as the non i models as they were all max2 inks from the start.
we shake the carts do extra re-circulations do non profit white prints every other day when not printing for profit and still run in to clogging problems,
thanks for reading my ramble
so hows your white experience ?

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

We were in the same boat for years. Ended up biting the bullet and realising that we weren't making enough on metallic/white jobs so just put a few cleaning cartridges in there and forgot those channels existed.

We now have a UV flatbed w.R2R so use that since the inks are actually opaque and dry instantly rather than minutes.

Our Epson S80600 has the option for white or metallic however we've had a cleaning tank in there for 18 months and will definitely be leaving it that way.

 

[Malkin]

We have a VG540 (TrueVIS inkset) with white, owned 2 years next month. Did not have white in any previous wide format (do have an Gerber Edge, but that is quite different).
I try to run some white every week, sometime I forget and it goes 2 weeks. Not yet had any clogging issues, nozzle check is clean. The tech noticed some "build up" on the head that he said was due to not running white frequently enough, so we may have an issue in the future if I don't improve my habits.

We do gently shake the pouch every so often, however we found that this was not enough. The pigment settles too quickly. The 1st cartridge ran clear with at least 1/3 remaining. Once we realized the issue, we started giving the pouch a manual shake just before hitting "print" every time. This keeps the lines charged with properly mixed ink, and the full ink pouch can be used if this routine is followed.

The white ink is still not opaque enough for my preference, but it gets the job done for most things. Just don't expect white ink on clear to match cut white vinyl if you're placing them near each other.

 

[woolly]

thanks for your time any more views from users.

 

[JoeDG]

Shake the white every day...yes...every day and even if not printing white for a few days/week make sure you just run a small print of just white through and it will (should) be fine.
Most the time people don't do the shaking or print regularly...even if just a bit and then expect it to work. The particles settle in the carts so need agitating every day - as the head will still pull through ink during cleans.