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Falcon 1 Outdoor 48 rebuild - documenting!

J

jhanson

New Member
60C is really high for Oracal vinyl. Is it wrinkling at all? Normally people run adhesive vinyls between 35-40C on the platen and leave the drier (fixer) at max.

The other thing that may be causing it is the print mode. The DX3 heads on this machine only have a 1/2" nozzle width, compared to 1" on the newer machines. In addition, there are only 64 nozzles per color, where the newer machines have 180-360 nozzles per color (depending on configuration).

So if you're trying to run at 180 or 360 dpi, don't even bother. The quality will be completely unacceptable no matter how hard you try. 720 is generally passable, and 720x1440 seems to be the usual production mode.
 
chorca

chorca

New Member
Didn't see any wrinkling, but I'm not sure i can set the mode that the builtin test print prints at.. I think it just prints at one, but I could be wrong, I'll check again when I get home. The same thing happened at room-temp (heaters off) and heaters on, so not sure if heat is the reason it's messing up. Plus, the solid boxes of color are perfect, as are the solid primary colors (CMYK)
 
J

jhanson

New Member
In that case, if it's only the mixed colors that look bad to you, the head alignments are almost guaranteed to be off.
 
chorca

chorca

New Member
So after trying about 20 different combinations of import color profiles, and printing profiles, I found that lowering the ink limits to about 65% had a huge improvement in the color quality, as well as how well it was printing darker areas. It looked like it was laying down way too much ink, and when I turned down the ink limits, that *really* helped. The colors are much more in line with what they should be now, so not sure if that's supposed to be played with or not.

I turned down the temps on the platen to 40C and the front heater to 50C.

I'm going to run some more tests and get the post up, then I'll see if I can get some test prints up tomorrow.
 
chorca

chorca

New Member
I'm using Flexi 7.6. What needs more alignment in those pictures, would you say? I've been through most of the head alignments in the system, but some of those it was difficult to get correct. I can go back and do them all again if need be, i have about 6' of alignment printouts, lol.

I could have done many of them improperly.. the maintenance manual leaves much to be desired in the way of clarity. The version I have seems to have been translated from spanish.
 
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C

CRD

New Member
If you look at the colors the top and and bottom are not in a row.
One is slightly tilted against the other.
If I am not mistaken the 48 uses two 3 color printheads.
I do not know which head produces which color.
Yellow and Magenata are lower compared to Black and Cyan
So this needs a tilt adjustment as described in the manual A and B screws.
Also the magenta and cyan merge a little at the border.
Do not know if the 48 manual you have is as the 38 manual I have.
Use 40 cm wide media for testing this will cover most of the manual adjustments I found out.

I hope this helps

Paco
 
chorca

chorca

New Member
Went back and did another 8' worth of calibration prints, I got things pretty close, the left head is just a tiny bit rotated, but hopefully I can fix that.

I put a new post up about what I've been through since the reassembly.
http://falconoutdoor.blogspot.com/2012/02/printing.html

I've also put some more info into the Wiki. Since in the two sections in the manual that talk about calibration, neither actually lists what my machine has in it, I'm kind of writing my own.
http://www.chorca.com/wiki/index.php/Print_Head_Calibration

I'm still getting really good results as far as color shift by running it at 65% ink limits on all channels through Flexi. I'm not sure if this is bad, or if anyone else uses it like this, but it defaulted to 100%, and that was soaking the vinyl with ink. The dark areas looked like process black and were raised with little to no detail. Now the colors are lighter and looking much better, even though before I had been using the profile provided by Oracal for this vinyl.
 
chorca

chorca

New Member
Alright, been playing with the printer more, working on it and learning Flexi some, to see what I can come up with.

Tonight, I figured out how to get my Roland PC-60 to contour cut from things the Falcon outputs. This was not easy, because Flexi is like "You can't use the Roland, it doesn't do registration". I fixed that by laying down my own registration marks and manually specifying the origin when loading the media into the cutter. this worked great. I printed a bunch of things and contour cut them, so I'm going to start buttoning up the rest of the machine as far as electronics and such go. I ordered a new damper, hopefully it comes in soon.

Looks like I'll be in the market for a cutter that can do optical registration soon, hopefully somewhere around 40-50". Looking around locally.
 
D

DTFuqua

New Member
After all the work you've put in, how much money do you have in the machine so far? Not counting labor.
 
chorca

chorca

New Member
DTFuqua said:
After all the work you've put in, how much money do you have in the machine so far? Not counting labor.
Click to expand...

Well, $750 for the printer, $1100 for rebuild kit, bulk tank, and syringe, $70 for solvent/acetone to make cleaner, $400 for ink and $120 for vinyl.

$1920 for the whole Printer+Parts

$550 for consumables

$2470 total.

They guy i bought it from also thew in a copy of Flexi 7.6v2, though, so that's to be counted as well I suppose...
 
P

PURVEYOR

New Member
chorca this is awesome! thanks so much for doing this. I am in a similar situation, just bought a falcon RJ6000 for $700 with the intention to get my hands dirty and learn the ins and outs of the printer. I'm just starting to get into re-building it. have had a few snags so far. seems we're kindred spirits. I'm not going to rest till I get this printer back up and running. Its a challenge though as I'm learning as I go.. so I'm learning from my mistakes.


cheers
 
chorca

chorca

New Member
Awesome! I'm glad I could help! That's my whole reason for doing this, I've gotten at least 5 or so emails from people who are doing the same thing, so I just want to do my best to make it easier. They're not bad machines, once you get them running, and knowing them inside and out really helps when you have a problem!

Good luck with your rebuild, let me know if I can be of any help!
 
chorca

chorca

New Member
Having a bit of an odd issue with color now, though it seems color is a lifelong struggle.

I have set up Flexi (7.6v2) to use the profile provided by Oracal for the 3651 vinyl on a Falcon Outdoor at 720x720, which is what I'm using.
I installed the preset, and set the profile to be used as the output media, the color correction, and for ink linearization.

For input, i'm importing my files as default RGB (they are .PNG illustrations) and setting my output for bitmaps to Absolute Colorimetric.

My monitor is an HP ZR24w S-IPS panel, and I've imported the manufacturer's ICM file into Flexi for color management, as well as installing it in windows. The colors displayed on the monitor seem correct.

The issue I'm having is that while I'm able to get most all colors right on now, browns are particularly difficult. Most all of them print as maroon or very reddish instead of the browns that they are. All my other colors (Greens, yellows, reds, blues) are printing fine in the same images, so when I try to turn magenta down to correct the issue, it also shifts the other colors in the image.

I've tried bumping up the heat on the platen to help with some mottling I had earlier, and all my ink limits are at 100%. However, the color hasn't changed for me.

I've been all over the forums and internet tonight, and while I realize that while the best thing to do for color profile issues is to create your own profile, I am not able to afford an i1 package. Looking at some other tools like a digital swatchbook though, I may be able to get, if it will work with Flexi, and I can create a profile with it.

I'm really confused here. This color stuff is just making me crazy. Any advice?
 
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chorca

chorca

New Member
So, I found a hardware-only i1 on ebay for about $500, so i decided I'd go for that, since supposedly Flexi supports it, as well as ArgyllCMS, and both should be able to create a profile for my printer. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any info on the Flexi profile creator... So I think I'm going to have to figure out how to do it myself. I'll post up some instructions on how I did it, once I'm done..

The I1 should come in soon, next week or so.
 
C

CRD

New Member
Chorca,

I am having the same problem with Flexi 8.1v1.
I like to print carbon but the magenta is all over the place.
When I turn down magenta in Lineratization and in Adjustments it gets better but then white lines appear in the print as if there is banding.
If you look in the FLexi thread you see I have made a custom profile with a http://spyder.datacolor.com/product-pp-spyderstudio.php but I cant import it where other 3rd party icm profiles can be loaded without problem.

Paco
 
chorca

chorca

New Member
CRD said:
Chorca,
When I turn down magenta in Lineratization and in Adjustments it gets better but then white lines appear in the print as if there is banding.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I have the same problem. I've tried turning down Magenta in both linearization and the color sliders in the rip and print box, but still get poor results. It's definitely the color calibration, since most colors come out just fine, but I just have issues with browns, greys, and some blues. Green, yellow, magenta, lighter blues, are all fine.

Since Flexi fully supports the eye-one, I'm going to give it a shot and see what I can come up with, maybe I can make a profile that'll work properly and can export it to you.
 
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