That printer is straight garbage. We are sponsored by Mutoh and they supplied a brand new xpertjet 1641 srpro. I was super stoked...new ink formula, better printhead...etc. Bosses got rid of our valuejet 1624 before we even had the new one setup...we did a couple test prints, color matching previous jobs...no big prints just small 12x12" swatches ...everything seemed okay...print speed wasnt great but i figured with time to play with the settings id get it dialed in. Next day i go to print a giant vehicle wrap, 3 60x120" panels, dark blue pattern. Right from the get go i start getting weird repeating drop off, banding every 18" but the weird thing was it wasnt uniform across the roll, it'd be narrower on the edges, and way fatter in the middle. Upon closer inspection it looked as if the cyan ink was not adhering to the vinyl (Avery1305). I thought, huh, that's weird, maybe the roll is contaminated. Maybe there's dust, maybe static charge....who knows. Switch out roll. Clean head, clean wiper, set up for another print..looks good...until about 60" in.. then wham...same thing. I begin to get a little worried. I've got a 2 week back log of vehicle wraps to print, I'd just gotten back from being sick for a week and this shit is not cool. Besides the fact that the dithering pattern used by the printer was...i dunno, more diffuse than the 1624, despite the fact that they were both using Mutoh iweave pattern "fine & fog 3". The highest quality (and therefore slowest) setting on the 1641 srpro, visually seemed to be equivalent to the medium quality setting of the 1624. So I text Fellers (our supplier in sunny California) and they give me the usual rigamarole about it probably being just a bad roll, or it had dust on it, sorta subtlely implying that I had somehow screwed up the settings or I was imagining the banding (which we began to call the Anomaly, as it was neither drop off, nor banding. Similar to both, but truly neither) So after about a week of this and having to throw out like a bunch of vinyl, I get the bosses involved. There's various theories proposed running from the ordinary, bad print head, bad ink formula, a giant batch of bad vinyl, to the utterly bizzare; fluctuations in the power line going into the printer, random non linear static build up, maybe a microscopic hole in the cyan ink line, etc. At this point MUTOH USA has gotten involved and is at first having me send pictures showing the banding and then files and finally shipping them printed pieces to they can look at it up close. MUTOH Japan then gets roped in and they create a brand new profile for Flexi which they assure me will fix the problem. This is now about a month after we first set up the printer. 1st replacement profile...no good. Second replacement profile...also no good. So then MUTOH starts changing their tune a little bit... Stop using flexi they say...start using the brand new Vertelith Rip Software they've created just for the 1641 sr pro. So I do...only 1 problem. Vertelith at the time lacked the ability to handle cut-paths embedded in the printfile, unlike flexi which has no problem doing that. Well that's not gonna work, I've got to be able to contour cut. But I give Vertelith a try, it gets rid of the anomaly...almost, but it does it by dropping and absolute metric-fuckton of ink down on the vinyl...I mean like fucking bathes it. Well that's no good. The fucking ink doesn't have time to dry before it gets to the take up reel....it's practically dripping off the vinyl. So bosses are mad, I'm mad, Mutoh is flummoxed and Fellers is just confused. So Mutoh flies out one of their techs to take a look and make sure the printer isn't defective or that I'm not some mouth-breathing-back-birth. He gets there has more fire off another print...and is like...what the hell? I'm like, I told you I wasn't imagining it...So after about 2 months of this bullshit and tell the bosses...I just want to be able to do my work quickly and accurately. I want to be able to match previous jobs, I don't want to sit there and have to meticulously clean the printhead twice a day, just for a print to take longer than it did on the supposedly cheaper, ten year old 1624. And don't even get me started on the black...no matter what settings I used or how I ripped the file, I couldn't not get a rich full black. It just looked sorta listless and dull. And that was how we ended up getting the new Valuejet and sending back the XpertJet. New Valuejet prints way fucking faster... no weird banding issues and I get a nice rich deep black and can color match to previous jobs. So yeah. Avoid the Xpertjet like the plague.
that is usually too much heat or rolls stored vertically... Or roll bad aligned on loading (advance it and retreat it to check its aligned). Try with other roll too!
