I think we figured it out, there is something funky with the profiles, the last thing we did was run our test prints on both printers using the 'Generic Self-Adhesive Vinyl' profile on both printers and they printed nearly perfectly, a subtle difference, but not enough to stop us from printing trailer wraps... why that profile works and all the others don't is anyone's guess.
A very common misconception about color profiles is that they are static, absolute definitions of color. The reality is that they are fine tuning color for your unique printer, ink, vinyl, and environment. Two printers of the same model, with the same printheads, same ink, same vinyl, and in the same room can have differences that affect color. So when you use boxed profiles, you're using the specific fine tuned parameters of someone else's printer, ink, vinyl, and environment. To get consistent color between printers, you need to make your own profiles for each printer individually. Even over time, as a printhead ages, the linearized output of the printhead will delinearize and needs to be tweaked back into linearization, which is why sometimes when you reprint a job from a year ago, the colors don't quite match. All this to say, there's a lot more going on in profiles than most people realize.
But in most
sign shops, close is good enough so a lot of people use boxed profiles and that's perfectly fine until you need to match specific colors or match colors with another printer.
