Banding issues - SC545EX ProIIV

[eahicks]

Suddenly having serious banding issues, on most all solid colors. Have done cleanings, heads are all firing correctly that I can tell, and get this darker/lighter banding on high speed, standard, or high quality. Anyone got any ideas or having the same issues?
It is noticeable on everything, but solids (this blue and a green I had to do earlier) all look horrible.

 

[Jack Knight1979]

chromatic banding.

align the heads in the di-dir calibration. Profile could be the problem. We get certain medias. Only fix is to increase passes. Other materials, I never see it.

 

[eahicks]

Just did bi-directional calibration. All is good there. Same profile for this vinyl that we've been using forever. Ran this same print through Flexi rip and same results. Something is not right on this printer.

 

[CS-SignSupply-TT]

Could it be STATIC?

 

[Jack Knight1979]

could it be a bad roll? Humidity/temp could definitely be the culprit. I really don't think it's the printer.

 

[eahicks]

I just printed a test swatch of solid colors....red, blue, green, black, yellow....ran it at standard w-pass.....came out as solid as you can get on inkjet. SO it must be the file....turns out this image (from the customer) is actually a masked bitmap (letters are a gradient blue). So i figure it's the file. But I have printed countless masked bitmap images and never have seen this. Tried to recreate the gradient in Flexi and print...I get the same banding. WTH??? I just stopped messing with this to print another job, basic red and black text, came out just fine. So why is this blue such a problem?

Ruled out: RIP, profile, media, inks, heads