How to fine tune head carriage height on an XC-540

[Jim Hancock]

You are welcome!

 

[CharlesTitan]

If the head carriage isn't level or is too low, you can adjust it in the following way. You will need a flat shim plate around 4"x8", can be larger, that is about 2.2mm thick. you will need to position it someplace on the platen. Raise the head carriage to the high position, and carefully move it over the shim plate, being sure the heads don't hit the shim plate. There are 6 screws on the sides of the head carriage, 3 on each side, that you will need to loosen. See attached pic. Loosen these screws, lower the head height to the low position, make sure the heads are level and resting on the shim plate and tighten the screws. Raise the head carriage to the high position and park it and remove the shim plate. You will have to realign the printheads, you should only need to do the horizontal and bidirectional. Let me know...

This is a very good advise I am only concerned about the 2.2mm, I have rebuilt 4 Rolands from scratch (sc-540 and 2x xr-640) no issues and now I am finishing and fine tuning an xc-540 but the bidirectional is 95% good, BUT... I have two colors that are more than +10 almost 10 but should be eleven, brand new heads bias, horizontal etc... all perfect, in service mode bi-dir it is perfect, as soon as I exit service mode the colors shifts. I feel I am over calibrating and wasting time and energy. By the way new servo board, print board, new encoder reader and sensor all calibrated. So, in your experience do I have to raise the carriage height above the 2.2mm on the low position? the heigh position is not acceptable. I am running 3.5mm vinyl, thanks in advance, Charles

 

[cornholio]

You are running 3.5mm thick vinyl?
If so, put the shims on top of that.

 

[Jim Hancock]

The shim needs to be placed on the bed of the printer without any media. This sets the head height in the low position to Roland factory spec height. Then do all 4 of the head calibrations in service mode, using the thinnest material you normally use. Next, go into the user menu. Hopefully you have the user guide. Refer to the section on "Correcting Misalignment for Printing or Cut", do the one that is for printing "more precisely", using the same media. Now, refer to the section called "Saving the Printer Settings to Match the Media" and save these settings as a preset. You can name them at this point. For other medias that are thicker, rerun this last calibration on the new thicker media and save the settings as a new preset. Just remember, when selecting any preset, you must set the head height to the same height it was when creating that preset. Hope this clarifies any questions...