Very unusual print problem, help needed

[iamdfd]

Hi,

I'm having a problem that I haven't seen before and have no idea what it could be, any help would be greatly appreciated. The problem is when printing solid black or any dark colour involving a lot of black the ink looks like it has been applied with a paint brush, it's definitely not banding as the lines don't run parallel. I've been in the industry for a while, by no means a digital expert and have never seen anything like this. I've cleaned, calibrated and tried every black composition there is including the Roland Versaworks blacks and it makes no difference. The feed calibration looks a bit off, I haven't done one for a while so I'm not sure if the odd black line in the picture is unusual. When I print solid CMYK blocks the yellow and magenta are perfect, the cyan is a little banded although the problem could still be there and just be more difficult to see in these colours.

Any advice on troubleshooting this would be extremely helpful.

Thanks in advance,

Dave

 

[Ragnabrok]

This is an SC or XC printer, the nozzle pattern looks good, but cant keep up with printing makes it lean toward an ink flow issue. Easy step one, check the cartridges, one may be empty and not have triggered the ink empty button in the cartridge bay.

Second would be the dampers on the heads not allowing enough flow, next the manifold on the head and then the possibility of the head itself just getting "tired" after a long enough use cycle.

 

[iamdfd]

Thanks Ragnabrok,

One of the black cartridges is very low so i'll try that first. The lines that are in the black print aren't parallel though and are more in a wave pattern, will any of these problems produce that result. Also the printer is an XC 540.

Thanks,

Dave

 

[iamdfd]

Also the problem is not so bad printing unidirectional, bidirectional is terrible no matter how slow I print

 

[Ragnabrok]

Still leaning towards ink supply, dampers likely.

Another angle are the cleaning related parts, caps, wipers, wiper scraper and surge mist sponge. all of those are fairly cheap, and a good idea to change anyway if they haven't been so in a while.

 

[WalkerP]

How do the fill patterns look from the maintenance mode?

 

[iamdfd]

Hi Ragnabrok, sorry for the late reply I'm in Melbourne and didn't get your reply until this morning. The dampers, caps and wiper rubber I'm pretty sure I can do myself, there are some good youtube videos and it looks fairly straight forward. These are all available on eBay and as you said are fairly cheap or would you tend towards using original Roland parts? I haven't found somewhere to buy the wiper scraper and surge mist sponge yet but will try to source them on Monday. Would you suggest that I do it in any stages or just do the lot?

 

[iamdfd]

Hi WalkerP, Thanks for the reply. I haven't been into maintenance mode yet. I assume fill patterns is a test print, will this give a better indication of what the problem is? Also sorry for the late reply.

 

[Ragnabrok]

you could do just the cap and dampers for the black, since it is causing the most problems, and keep a few extras on hand. It's a toss up for any hard lean between OEM and 3rd party parts, some places can sell OEM for near the same price as 3rd party, and some 3rd party is the same or better quality.

 

[iamdfd]

Thanks Ragnabrok, I'll order the parts on Monday. Is there anything I should look out for or any common mistake people make when first doing these things? What about the fill pattern that WalkerP mentioned?

 

[Ragnabrok]

yeah, careful taking off and replacing the dampers, you can snap the stem off the head manifold with too much wiggling. also be careful when you take a damper off you dont drip ink onto the PCB part of the head.

The fill pattern is a good tool to see which colour is giving grief when the nozzle check looks good.

 

[Bly]

The test prints look fine.
How many passes are you using?
Those printers struggle to lay down enough ink at low pass settings.

 

[WalkerP]

Sorry for late reply. Yes, the fill patterns are in maintenance mode and you can control each channel and the % of each. I think you can control dot patterns and resolutions too. It's been a while, so I'm going off memory.

 

[NormanL]

Play around with Interpolation, direction, preset settings in the quality tab, i've done alot of testing and manage to go with something thats borderline, im using Bi linear, Bi direction and prepress japan and its been working well. You can also print a block of black and it might get the heads firing
​

 

[oksigns]

I can't see your attachment, but this sounds like a problem I've run in to recently. The complete color gamut is spot on, but "grayscale" and "black" under my main profile shows horrible results/performance. I made a custom 12 pass profile for projects that contain a predominant amount of black & grayscale images to solve this on my common oracal vinyls. I have surrendered to the fact that it is a profiling issue for myself, so don't be closed to that idea.

I had run through everything I could think of. Heater, caps, blades, etc.. so give it a go

Hi,

I'm having a problem that I haven't seen before and have no idea what it could be, any help would be greatly appreciated. The problem is when printing solid black or any dark colour involving a lot of black the ink looks like it has been applied with a paint brush, it's definitely not banding as the lines don't run parallel. I've been in the industry for a while, by no means a digital expert and have never seen anything like this. I've cleaned, calibrated and tried every black composition there is including the Roland Versaworks blacks and it makes no difference. The feed calibration looks a bit off, I haven't done one for a while so I'm not sure if the odd black line in the picture is unusual. When I print solid CMYK blocks the yellow and magenta are perfect, the cyan is a little banded although the problem could still be there and just be more difficult to see in these colours.

Any advice on troubleshooting this would be extremely helpful.

Thanks in advance,

Dave

 

[iamdfd]

Hi Everyone,

And thanks again for all the help. A few days ago I installed the Roland maintenance kit and unfortunately it hasn't fixed the problem. By chance a supplier who used to work for Roland dropped in yesterday and while he was here I went through the problem with him and he immediately said that it was the print head. His diagnosis was based purely on my description and no testing was done, the company he works for is also a roland distributor and I could buy the head from them for $1100 + installation.

Ragnabrok, I'm still waiting on the dampers, I'll let you know how it goes when I get them in. OKSigns, I wish it was a profiling issue but the problem shows up on different media, all of which I have been using for quite a while with no issues.

Thanks,

Dave