CJV150 & JV150 - Horribly Inaccurate Colors - Don't know what to do :(

[johnb554]

Hey guys.
I have been searching up and down for a reasonable solution to this problem and I have yet to find it.
Before anyone attacks me, yes I have used the search on the forum and I have tried pretty much every suggestion here, and I cannot get any good results so first of all, I would like to see what other users of these machines think and what experiences they are having, and secondly, I would greatly appreciate some help here, as we are losing clients and money every time we have this problem.

We have 2 machines, a CJV150 and JV150 both running SS21 Inks (we use jetbest inks, not OEM cartridges)
I have tried going back to OEM inks as well and there is not a whole lot of change or improvement in the color output.

RIP is Rasterlink 7 - We are well set up on it and do not have the ability to change out of it at the moment.
All profiles used are ones downloaded from the profile manager online. We have tried the media specific ones as well as the GPVC generic profile, and they do not vary a ton either.

The problem I am having is that most colors are COMPLETELY out to lunch.
I cant even dare to think that I might get in the ballpark of a pantone, or even get a usable image for most jobs regardless of whether it needs to be matched to a pantone or not.

I have contacted ND graphics (our local sales and service company for Mimaki) and they have been completely of no use either.
Their tech suggested printing a pantone color chart from the printer, than using that as a reference guide for colors, which we have been doing, but this only goes so far. When we are dealing with photographic images, or gradients, or other types of work that are not solid colors, its a pretty useless solution.

I would LOVE to have profiles made for the printer, but ND graphics does not have the equipment to do it so that is of no help.
I have tried reaching out to other companies and they do not have the Mimaki software to make the profiles.
Apparently nobody in Calgary, AB exists that can profile a Mimaki printer, and I find that somewhat sad.

I am attaching some photos of our variance in colors from another shop that I had print them who uses a roland with canned profiles, and it is insanely different. The roland is outputting color that is very close to what you would expect, and ours is just outputting literal poop.

On the sun decal, mimaki output is dark crappy looking one.
On the blue decal, the mimaki output isthe one being pointed to.

Can someone for the love of god please put me out of my misery and try to help me with this.
I am literally at the point of tears - and I say that in all seriousness.

 

[FrankW]

With what do you compare, what is your reference?

Pantone colors are really hard to match on a 4-Color-Printer, because pantone colors are solid colors mixed out of a collection of 18 base solid colors, and meant to be mixed physically and filled into an offset printing machine. And they are intended to print colors which are mainly not be reproducable accurate on 4-color-machines.

Another problem is the third party-ink you use. The profiles downloaded by the profile manager are made for specific mimaki inks. Even with original ink color can vary because on some factors, an ink with a - perhaps - deviated color gamut can add problems.

At the end, even color management settings in Rasterlink can lead to color deviations, sometimes by intention, to optimize other things on the cost of color accuracy.

You could buy the mimaki profile master yourself, and a measuring device. But, to be honest, it is very expensive. In Europe the MPM with an Xrite i1-Spectro will cost near to 4‘000 Euros. Another possibility, sometimes cheaper, is buying a third party RIP.

 

[Solventinkjet]

If you can, take a screenshot of your profile settings page on one of those jobs. We might be able to spot a setting out of place.

 

[johnb554]

With what do you compare, what is your reference?

Pantone colors are really hard to match on a 4-Color-Printer, because pantone colors are solid colors mixed out of a collection of 18 base solid colors, and meant to be mixed physically and filled into an offset printing machine. And they are intended to print colors which are mainly not be reproducable accurate on 4-color-machines.

Another problem is the third party-ink you use. The profiles downloaded by the profile manager are made for specific mimaki inks. Even with original ink color can vary because on some factors, an ink with a - perhaps - deviated color gamut can add problems.

At the end, even color management settings in Rasterlink can lead to color deviations, sometimes by intention, to optimize other things on the cost of color accuracy.

You could buy the mimaki profile master yourself, and a measuring device. But, to be honest, it is very expensive. In Europe the MPM with an Xrite i1-Spectro will cost near to 4‘000 Euros. Another possibility, sometimes cheaper, is buying a third party RIP.

Thanks for the input, frank.
I am comparing to Pantone process color (CMYK) as a reference, as well as the output from other machines, including just our cheap office color laser printer, which actually seems to give us colors that represent what the colors should look like on my calibrated monitors.

I just find that the mimaki is printing a lot of yellows as browns, a lot of greens as blues, a lot of greys as purples, and so on and so forth.

I considered getting the software and spectro, but its out of my price range right now with what is feasible. I would happily pay someone to make the profiles for me, however.

 

[johnb554]

If you can, take a screenshot of your profile settings page on one of those jobs. We might be able to spot a setting out of place.

Here you go!
On this one, I am using the mimaki expand color (which sometimes seems to get us a tad closer) but realistically both the default and the expand color are out to lunch.
On some projects it seems to be acceptable, but on the photos I posted earlier for example its horrific.
I dont know what to do at this point. Hopefully this helps.

 

[Solventinkjet]

Here you go!
On this one, I am using the mimaki expand color (which sometimes seems to get us a tad closer) but realistically both the default and the expand color are out to lunch.
On some projects it seems to be acceptable, but on the photos I posted earlier for example its horrific.
I dont know what to do at this point. Hopefully this helps.

View attachment 157259

That all looks pretty standard to me. If you want to upload the file I can print it out on my CJV150 I have in the shop and see if the output is any better.

 

[rjssigns]

Hey guys.
I have been searching up and down for a reasonable solution to this problem and I have yet to find it.
Before anyone attacks me, yes I have used the search on the forum and I have tried pretty much every suggestion here, and I cannot get any good results so first of all, I would like to see what other users of these machines think and what experiences they are having, and secondly, I would greatly appreciate some help here, as we are losing clients and money every time we have this problem.

We have 2 machines, a CJV150 and JV150 both running SS21 Inks (we use jetbest inks, not OEM cartridges)
I have tried going back to OEM inks as well and there is not a whole lot of change or improvement in the color output.

RIP is Rasterlink 7 - We are well set up on it and do not have the ability to change out of it at the moment.
All profiles used are ones downloaded from the profile manager online. We have tried the media specific ones as well as the GPVC generic profile, and they do not vary a ton either.

The problem I am having is that most colors are COMPLETELY out to lunch.
I cant even dare to think that I might get in the ballpark of a pantone, or even get a usable image for most jobs regardless of whether it needs to be matched to a pantone or not.

I have contacted ND graphics (our local sales and service company for Mimaki) and they have been completely of no use either.
Their tech suggested printing a pantone color chart from the printer, than using that as a reference guide for colors, which we have been doing, but this only goes so far. When we are dealing with photographic images, or gradients, or other types of work that are not solid colors, its a pretty useless solution.

I would LOVE to have profiles made for the printer, but ND graphics does not have the equipment to do it so that is of no help.
I have tried reaching out to other companies and they do not have the Mimaki software to make the profiles.
Apparently nobody in Calgary, AB exists that can profile a Mimaki printer, and I find that somewhat sad.

I am attaching some photos of our variance in colors from another shop that I had print them who uses a roland with canned profiles, and it is insanely different. The roland is outputting color that is very close to what you would expect, and ours is just outputting literal poop.

On the sun decal, mimaki output is dark crappy looking one.
On the blue decal, the mimaki output isthe one being pointed to.

Can someone for the love of god please put me out of my misery and try to help me with this.
I am literally at the point of tears - and I say that in all seriousness.

View attachment 157257 View attachment 157258

There are some profiling gurus on the forum. Might be worth spending the money to get your system dialed in.

As far as profiling a Mimaki printer that is doable. Any printer supporting ICC framework can be profiled.

 

[Humble PM]

I don't use this rip or printer, so I could well be way off mark.
Couple of things. Are the files you're printing CMYK or RGB? If CMYK, looks like your input profile is set to MimakiHContrast.icm, which is probably cool, if you've taken your file from its current profile and converted to that. But if the rip is just assuming this profile, and your default is something like US SWOP Coated, that could hose things. If RGB, are the source images profiles ARGB?
Big differences can happen on the rendering intents. You're on relative, which I'm assuming is relative colorametric - might be worth trying perceptual, can make a big shift with photographic images. Equally running Mimaki_expand_colors could be pumping all tones up.
You could try taking a known good test (photographic) image, and converting (not assigning) to the 3691M icc profile, then specify device profile directly. If you don't have a known good test image, I can send you one in the (UK) morning - I have one that I run when ever I have new papers, issues, or FU&D.
My world is stalked full of colour accuracy monsters, and I run a 12 colur aqueous printer, but colour management is "just" a set of rules. I've made ancient laser printers, and crusty 4 colour ink machines sing, but mostly, I cheat and use OEM inks, and an old i1pro. But sometimes I miss a simple check box in the SW.
I take it that your nozzle checks are all good...

 

[johnb554]

That all looks pretty standard to me. If you want to upload the file I can print it out on my CJV150 I have in the shop and see if the output is any better.

Thats a great idea. Let me fire the files over tomorrow.

 

[johnb554]

There are some profiling gurus on the forum. Might be worth spending the money to get your system dialed in.

As far as profiling a Mimaki printer that is doable. Any printer supporting ICC framework can be profiled.

Definitely willing to spend the money to get the profiles made.. but apparently even our certified technician in Calgary cant make profiles.. what a joke. And as a small shop, I cant swallow thousands of dollars to buy the software and hardware myself. I would be willing to buy the hardware even on ebay or something, but the MPM3 software is like 3 grand US alone, and unless someone will let me borrow their licence for a bit, I dont think this is in the books for me.

 

[johnb554]

I don't use this rip or printer, so I could well be way off mark.
Couple of things. Are the files you're printing CMYK or RGB? If CMYK, looks like your input profile is set to MimakiHContrast.icm, which is probably cool, if you've taken your file from its current profile and converted to that. But if the rip is just assuming this profile, and your default is something like US SWOP Coated, that could hose things. If RGB, are the source images profiles ARGB?
Big differences can happen on the rendering intents. You're on relative, which I'm assuming is relative colorametric - might be worth trying perceptual, can make a big shift with photographic images. Equally running Mimaki_expand_colors could be pumping all tones up.
You could try taking a known good test (photographic) image, and converting (not assigning) to the 3691M icc profile, then specify device profile directly. If you don't have a known good test image, I can send you one in the (UK) morning - I have one that I run when ever I have new papers, issues, or FU&D.
My world is stalked full of colour accuracy monsters, and I run a 12 colur aqueous printer, but colour management is "just" a set of rules. I've made ancient laser printers, and crusty 4 colour ink machines sing, but mostly, I cheat and use OEM inks, and an old i1pro. But sometimes I miss a simple check box in the SW.
I take it that your nozzle checks are all good...

These files with the photos above were in ARGB on illustrator, because thats what the client provided. I did check that the input profile matched there.
I did notice that on the default color matching settings on the input side of RL, the CMYK input is WideMimakiCMYK.icm and that on the Mimaki Expand its MimakiHiContrast.icm
These 2 profiles that its looking for on input, are not loaded into illustrator. I dont even know how to do that. My illustrator settings are as follows. Could this be the culprit and how would I go about ruling it out?
It seems that even switching from SRGB to ARGB doesnt even produce any noticable difference if anything. Like some of these colors are so out to lunch I cant even describe it.
This one project for the wall decals is a bit of a black sheep. Normally I work in CMYK only for our projects. but this client only had scans in RGB, however it looks great on my screen, it prints pretty true to the screen on a Roland machine from another shop, and it prints like absolute dog doo doo on our mimaki with the jetbest inks.
I did talk to jetbest as well. They dont have any specific output profiles for the ink, however they do claim that the formulation and pigments are compatible to the OEM profiles and should not be any different. I would expect a small variance here, but nothing like we are getting!

 

[FrankW]

Definitely willing to spend the money to get the profiles made.. but apparently even our certified technician in Calgary cant make profiles.. what a joke.

I work for a mimaki dealer, and only one other of our 12 members of the service team except me would be able to write profiles or to handle a spectro. Most of them are very good, experienced hardware guys, but with limited software knowledge, being both is very rare. Learning profiling is not neccessary to be a certified technician.

The settings for the CMYK Input profile will not affect RGB data. But RGB has a larger gamut than CMYK, so RGB-data could look mich better on the screen than later on the print.

You know the color replacement functionality in Rasterlink? Could help, but work best with vectors, and with CMYK only. Onyx RIP for example have a color swatchbook function that works with every color type, and Flexi for example has the ability to optimize a profile for specific color swatches.

For my opinion, your main problem is that you use mimaki ss21 profiles with third party ink. While I do not know the ink, and some matching better than others.

I would help you, but I‘m in Europe, the travel costs would be much too high

 

[rjssigns]

Definitely willing to spend the money to get the profiles made.. but apparently even our certified technician in Calgary cant make profiles.. what a joke. And as a small shop, I cant swallow thousands of dollars to buy the software and hardware myself. I would be willing to buy the hardware even on ebay or something, but the MPM3 software is like 3 grand US alone, and unless someone will let me borrow their licence for a bit, I dont think this is in the books for me.I can't

This semester we may be training students how to build profiles for our Mimaki roll fed printers. If we do I can share the profiles with no guarantee on improving your current situation. Can't promise anything since I don't know if we're going that direction.

Odd thing with your issue is we've been running canned profiles on the roll fed and flatbed and they've been fine. Are the colors accurate? Don't know, haven't dug into color accuracy using the densitometers or spectrophotometers. But there hasn't been anything close to the color issues you're having and our lab does all the marketing collateral for the main and satellite campuses.

 

[gabagoo]

I run a jv150 using Jetbest inks and have no problems matching colours up to pantones using the Onyx colour chart someone posted a while back. I don't run Rasterlink though and use Flexi.

 

[johnb554]

I work for a mimaki dealer, and only one other of our 12 members of the service team except me would be able to write profiles or to handle a spectro. Most of them are very good, experienced hardware guys, but with limited software knowledge, being both is very rare. Learning profiling is not neccessary to be a certified technician.

The settings for the CMYK Input profile will not affect RGB data. But RGB has a larger gamut than CMYK, so RGB-data could look mich better on the screen than later on the print.

You know the color replacement functionality in Rasterlink? Could help, but work best with vectors, and with CMYK only. Onyx RIP for example have a color swatchbook function that works with every color type, and Flexi for example has the ability to optimize a profile for specific color swatches.

For my opinion, your main problem is that you use mimaki ss21 profiles with third party ink. While I do not know the ink, and some matching better than others.

I would help you, but I‘m in Europe, the travel costs would be much too high

I understand.
I have done profiling in the past and know how it works and how to do it, so really the big problem for me is lack of access to software and hardware.
I did fine an i1 pro 2 for sale locally for a good price, but its the EFI version (I think it should still work?)
I am willing to buy it and build the profiles, but my problem now is not having access to Mimaki Profile Master 3

 

[johnb554]

I run a jv150 using Jetbest inks and have no problems matching colours up to pantones using the Onyx colour chart someone posted a while back. I don't run Rasterlink though and use Flexi.

Are your canned profiles coming from SAI or from Mimaki?
I am downloading them through the profile update software that installs with rasterlink.

Very very odd, though. Not sure where to look now, if you say you are using jetbest and have good color coming out.
I do have a color chart that I have printed as well, so that I can match spot colors to what the printer is actually outputting (even though the color codes may be different) but that is real hard to solve with raster images like the one above, that doesnt have solid colors.

 

[johnb554]

This semester we may be training students how to build profiles for our Mimaki roll fed printers. If we do I can share the profiles with no guarantee on improving your current situation. Can't promise anything since I don't know if we're going that direction.

Odd thing with your issue is we've been running canned profiles on the roll fed and flatbed and they've been fine. Are the colors accurate? Don't know, haven't dug into color accuracy using the densitometers or spectrophotometers. But there hasn't been anything close to the color issues you're having and our lab does all the marketing collateral for the main and satellite campuses.

Yeah, that is really strange.
Any ideas on what I should try at this point?
I just feel like with some jobs it works out, and with others it doesnt.

 

[ColorCrest]

Any ideas on what I should try at this point?

Set your "pass" setting to 1/2 of what it is currently. Make a print. Tell us the results.

 

[rjssigns]

Yeah, that is really strange.
Any ideas on what I should try at this point?
I just feel like with some jobs it works out, and with others it doesnt.

Hmmm...that's a tough one. With my Mutoh there are times I run an Orajet 3640 720x720 profile on Arlon 6000XRP material.(works a treat) Reason is with certain colors I get ever so slight banding. Never bothered the clients, but they don't seem to be as picky. We are our own worst enemies when it comes to inspection.

What I'm getting at is try a different profile. There could also be something deep in Rasterlink that got clicked by accident. I know I did that with Flexi when I got my Mutoh. Couple clicks and I monkeyed it up real good. Ended up having to wipe everything from the profile cue then reloading. There were some other things the tech had me do, but that's irrelevant to your issue.

When and if I get back on campus I can see what profiles we're using. May not be allowed back with the 'rona surge.

 

[johnb554]

That all looks pretty standard to me. If you want to upload the file I can print it out on my CJV150 I have in the shop and see if the output is any better.

Here is the file I am printing, as it is being sent to rasterlink, for anyone that has a CJV150 or JV150 who wants to try it. Gabagoo I know you mentioned you are running jetbest also, so I would love to see how this comes out on your end.
This link is the file I am sending to printer,with cut and registration
https://we.tl/t-RKJoQIYHcP

This link is the original artwork from client.
https://we.tl/t-IXJFf4jLOG