[SOLVED]Roland XC-540 Alignment Issue

[PrinterPower]

Good afternoon everyone.

Just starting this morning, I've been having issues printing on my XC-540 Soljet printer.

It was working fine before the weekend, but after running a job through, the print comes out misaligned and blurry. After trying a few calibration fixes, I cleaned the encoding strip and got slightly better results but after a few more test prints, the quality got even more worse than before. I also got the Service Code 0110.

Here are some pictures:

Printer at its worse before 0110 code:

After dealing with 0110 code:

After running a few more test prints:

I've tried to enter Service Mode but it keeps asking me to set the head height to Low but I'm not sure how to do that exactly.

Any understanding of what's going on would be great!

 

[JulieS]

I can't see your attached images, for some reason. But I have found that having your head height set on High can cause printing to be blurry. Not sure if that could be your whole problem (I'm not sure about that Service Code), but you might try changing head height to Low. Scroll down on the menu to find Head Height, hit enter and the carriage will move to the left so you can manually flip up or down a lever that's on the carriage. Then when you close the lid, the carriage automatically moves back into position. I only use high head height if I'm printing on a thicker material, like banner, that could more easily cause head strikes. When I've forgotten to re-set the height to low afterwards, I start noticing blurriness.

 

[PrinterPower]

I can't see your attached images, for some reason. But I have found that having your head height set on High can cause printing to be blurry. Not sure if that could be your whole problem (I'm not sure about that Service Code), but you might try changing head height to Low. Scroll down on the menu to find Head Height, hit enter and the carriage will move to the left so you can manually flip up or down a lever that's on the carriage. Then when you close the lid, the carriage automatically moves back into position. I only use high head height if I'm printing on a thicker material, like banner, that could more easily cause head strikes. When I've forgotten to re-set the height to low afterwards, I start noticing blurriness.

I think the image uploader I used requires you to right click and open image in a new tab. very strange.

Thanks for the head height tips, I'll have a look at that.

 

[Jim Hancock]

You have an encoder issue. What did you clean the encoder strip with? Hopefully not cleaning solution! Code 0110 is bad data from the encoder strip.

This is the best way to do this. You will need gloves, a clean microfiber cloth and acetone. Yes, acetone... It will not damage the encoder strip in any way. 91% alcohol is ok, but doesn't get all the ink off. NEVER use alcohol less than 91% as the water content in 70% alcohol will soften the emulsion on the encoder strip (it's a piece of graphics film) and can damage it. I have cleaned hundreds of encoder strips with acetone and never damaged one.

Enter the maintenance mode by pressing the cleaning button while turning on the front power switch. Select cleaning so the print head moves to the other end of the printer. Power off the printer with the main switch in the back of the printer. You can now freely move the print head so you can get the entire strip.

Cut several 2 inch squares of the microfiber cloth, wet it with acetone, and fold it over the encoder strip and wipe the stripe gently using your thumb and forefinger to hold the cloth against the encoder strip. Do this several times with a new square of cloth until the cloth is clean. When done, power up the printer, the head carriage will make its way back to home position on its own.

Let us know the result. If you need further help, my phone number is in my signature.

 

[PrinterPower]

You have an encoder issue. What did you clean the encoder strip with? Hopefully not cleaning solution! Code 0110 is bad data from the encoder strip.

This is the best way to do this. You will need gloves, a clean microfiber cloth and acetone. Yes, acetone... It will not damage the encoder strip in any way. 91% alcohol is ok, but doesn't get all the ink off. NEVER use alcohol less than 91% as the water content in 70% alcohol will soften the emulsion on the encoder strip (it's a piece of graphics film) and can damage it. I have cleaned hundreds of encoder strips with acetone and never damaged one.

Enter the maintenance mode by pressing the cleaning button while turning on the front power switch. Select cleaning so the print head moves to the other end of the printer. Power off the printer with the main switch in the back of the printer. You can now freely move the print head so you can get the entire strip.

Cut several 2 inch squares of the microfiber cloth, wet it with acetone, and fold it over the encoder strip and wipe the stripe gently using your thumb and forefinger to hold the cloth against the encoder strip. Do this several times with a new square of cloth until the cloth is clean. When done, power up the printer, the head carriage will make its way back to home position on its own.

Let us know the result. If you need further help, my phone number is in my signature.

Oh my god, thank you sooo much! The acetone worked amazing on it. I was near a panic attack as we're a small, local shop and while I was able to find new encoder strips online that didn't cost an arm and a leg, the shipping would take forever.

Again, thank you!

 

[Jim Hancock]

Excellent to hear! Where are you located?

 

[PrinterPower]

Excellent to hear! Where are you located?

Southern Alberta in Canada.

 

[Jim Hancock]

Got to be cooler up there then here in S Florida. High 90's today!

 

[anthonyd969]

I cleaned my encoder strip with 91% alcohol and it was a problem. First time actually having an issue after cleaning it.
So I flipped it, burned the little holes in the strip and used Acetone this time to clean it. Seemed to be fine now. So lets hope. I have another in stick but ordered a encoder reader as well just now. Better to have it in stock verse dead in water. Thanks for all the tips everyone.