Need Help [VP-540i] Cyan prints are grainy with green dots... Head replacement?

[MichaelFisherJr]

I have just purchased a Roland VP-540i.
It has been maintained, manually cleaned throughly, replaced yellow and magenta captops, replaced 2 wipers, as well as multiple powerful and medium cleans. I have attached my test prints, as well as bi-directional calibration below. For the most part, everything looks great. Yellows, Magentas, Blacks are all crisp and clean; however, any color containing cyan is very grainy with green dots mixed amongst. If you look at the bi-directional calibration (specifically H2 on number 2), the lines are all over the place. I am using Concept 230 vinyl, Roland inks, Color Chart-1 printed on VersaWorks with the GCVP profile and density control. Is this an issue with my bi-directional calibration or do I simply need a head replacement? Possibly something else?
Thank you very much for the help!
Mike

 

[player]

My opinion is you can't expect optimal printing with a test print like you have. You're missing nozzles on all your colours, plus some deflections. You might think about replacing all the captops. Try a head soak. You should be able to get all the nozzles firing.

I also have a vp540i.

 

[printhog]

you have two issues - head and media profile affecting your color. first the head issue :

the head alignment, as well as the media calibration, affect the output directly - head alginment is across the platen and calibration is along the feed direction.. they must be changed EVERYTIME you move the printer any great extent, and in some cases as you change thickness of media. To calibrate bi-dir- select the number where the color aligns as close as possible in each color and head setting and input those into the printers firmware. these are both firnware (system default) and media (loaded paper) specific.. so your best bet on a newly aquired machine is to reset the firmware with a flash to latest version to clear any prior users gibberish and retune the machine... bi dir settings can be very different for each head setting and color. the proper appearance is for the lines to align UNDER A LOUPE AT 10X so they appear as one smooth line of color.

Now having said that - Looking at your H2 range you have a head that cant deliver variable dot. may be the head, the cable, or the driver board.

I'd replace the cables first - maybe one got ink on it and went poopie.. ink is conductive. REMEMBER TO POWER MACHINE OFF before disconnecting anything- pull plug to be sure - - if that doesnt fix it - mark your cables for color and side before you conduct this next test:

POWER MACHINE OFF - pull plug - swap cyan head cables to yellow and the yellow head cables to cyan. power up - run test print - look to see if the cyan channel repeats the blurry error. remember that if you see physical evidence of the error in cyan color, your seeing a head problem, if you see the artifact in yellow your seeing a hardware issue before the head. if the head is bad, the error will still be seen in cyan print - if the hardware is bad (driver board) it will be seen in the yellow channel.

likely its the head... buy new head. head swap will require about 3 hours total.

important note - few will see the yellow overspray, so if you choose to swap heads physically you can run for a long time.. another workaround - in your rip - turn off vardot and use fixed dot instead, resolution will reduce but not so much....you can make perfectly fine graphics with fixed dot. i use fixed dot almost exclusivley.

also callibrate your media advance so the banding overlaps in your prints will go away.

these are all issues of moving one of these machines were the frame has flexed.

as for color output - your rip may be using an icc profile to output some yellow into what should be a pure cyan stream. to test for this output a pure cyan step wedge of 5% INCREMENTS, zero to 100%. if Y is present in ALL the color then your rip is misprofiled

 

[Roland Product Support]

Hello Michael,

The issue you're experiencing may not be the fault of the head. Of course, we cannot rule it out 100%, but it's not our focus for now. If you want official support from us, we recommend that you contact us so we can discuss theprocess method to get the machine running well. Just complete our onlinesupport form here: https://www.rolanddga.com/support/product-support-form. We lookforward to hearing from you!

Take care,

Roland Technical Support
Roland DGA Corp.
rn

 

[Tizz]

Unable to view your images. Have you replaced the encoder strip?
When I replaced mine it improved my prints significantly but am not saying this is the fix for your issues. There are a lot more variables. I would replace the cables first also as printhog mentioned.