Grainy prints engineer visited

[swarnes]

Hi
The engineer came and said the calibration is fine, adjusted heads and said its normal to get grainy even on best setting. On his print the red was alot of white dotty grain, and green.

I did a colour chart after and again same. The green especially is pretty dotty, and red. I have attached some pics.
Feedback pls

 

[swarnes]

Attached are the printed image of roland

 

[swarnes]

Attached closer images of red etc

 

[White Haus]

Printer?
Ink configuration?
Age?
Nozzle Check ok?

 

[swarnes]

Printer?
Ink configuration?
Age?
Nozzle Check ok?

It's Sg2-300
Ink cmyk
Age around 2 years old
Nozzle on service end perfect said no issues and nozzle on personal calibration also OK

 

[White Haus]

I just checked an old Roland chart we had printed a couple years ago and those "Strong" swatches definitely have some grain in them. The PR swatches are fairly solid. (Printed on XR-640)

Which profile did you use to print the swatches? If you use a high quality setting does it improve the quality/reduce the grain?

 

[swarnes]

I just checked an old Roland chart we had printed a couple years ago and those "Strong" swatches definitely have some grain in them. The PR swatches are fairly solid. (Printed on XR-640)

Which profile did you use to print the swatches? If you use a high quality setting does it improve the quality/reduce the grain?

Hi,

Thanks for your responses, which profile do you recommend I try?, I have used colour density and used true colour, tried most profiles.

High quailty, uni directional, bi-cubic.

Engineer said this is normal for inkjet printer as fires dots, and not to expect any solid colours even from red, green, blue etc.

It's hard to believe this is the expected outcome slightly grain maybe, but my £200 canon printer performs better colours.

 

[balstestrat]

Hi,

Thanks for your responses, which profile do you recommend I try?, I have used colour density and used true colour, tried most profiles.

High quailty, uni directional, bi-cubic.

Engineer said this is normal for inkjet printer as fires dots, and not to expect any solid colours even from red, green, blue etc.

It's hard to believe this is the expected outcome slightly grain maybe, but my £200 canon printer performs better colours.

That is because your £200 canon works differently and this is LARGE format printer.
I think your pictures are acceptable. Could it be better not sure but acceptable.

 

[swarnes]

That is because your £200 canon works differently and this is LARGE format printer.
I think your pictures are acceptable. Could it be better not sure

I was hoping to use this and purchased especially for printing decals/stickers,

Can you recommend how to optimise to get best quailty please?

Would bn-20 produce same quailty?

Does scaling pdf down effect quailty, should I make the file in the size id like to print or larger then downscale in versa?

 

[garyroy]

It's a little weird but your Strong colors in the first pic look very grayish.
I looked at the chart we printed off of our VP-300i and they look much more yellowish.

Did you try the "Nearest Neighbor" Interpolation? and "Max-Impact" in the Quality settings?
You might need to go for a professionally made profile for your particular material.
Not trying to muddy the matter but it does take some experimentation to get it all running smooth.
You'll get it, just be persistent with your testing.

 

[swarnes]

It's a little weird but your Strong colors in the first pic look very grayish.
I looked at the chart we printed off of our VP-300i and they look much more yellowish.

Did you try the "Nearest Neighbor" Interpolation? and "Max-Impact" in the Quality settings?
You might need to go for a professionally made profile for your particular material.
Not trying to muddy the matter but it does take some experimentation to get it all running smooth.
You'll get it, just be persistent with your testing.

I'm testing with gloss photo paper by graphfy and no profiles on site. Will try these settings, thank you.

 

[garyroy]

Does your supplier not offer a profile for that material and printer model?

 

[swarnes]

Does your supplier not offer a profile for that material and printer model?

Hi,

Contact Page

Blueprint: Horizontal Drop-Down Menu

www.grafiprint.info

No profile for sg2-300 I tried using sg300 profile and it will not import to versaworks

 

[DL Signs]

Yes, try some of what garyroy says....

Also, Rolands are notorious for printing more grainy when print temp is too low, and worse for glossy material. Don't remember what temps I used, been a minute since I ran a Roland, but raising it till I found that sweet spot for problem media eliminated a lot of it, sometimes corrected it. Some specific materials (gloss photo was one of them), I also had to slow the head speed down, and/ or run uni-directional. Different materials have different properties, it's a learning process of what works. Also make sure your head is in the low position, if it somehow got moved to high it would be pretty obvious by over spray on the edges of prints, but on medium it'll increase grainyness or make things blurry. First time that happened to me it drove me nuts that I suddenly couldn't get a clean print, and that it was such a simple thing that I missed.

Not all media will have canned profiles, but you can experiment with ones for other materials with similar properties, generic ones... If you find something that works, in versaworks (think it's in their media explorer), you can't re-name a canned profile, but you can copy it, then you can re-name it for the media you want to use it for. In the copied version you can tweak settings and save, and if you have a spectro you can even calibrate it, and have your own custom profile.

 

[swarnes]

Yes, try some of what garyroy says....

Also, Rolands are notorious for printing more grainy when print temp is too low, and worse for glossy material. Don't remember what temps I used, been a minute since I ran a Roland, but raising it till I found that sweet spot for problem media eliminated a lot of it, sometimes corrected it. Some specific materials (gloss photo was one of them), I also had to slow the head speed down, and/ or run uni-directional. Different materials have different properties, it's a learning process of what works. Also make sure your head is in the low position, if it somehow got moved to high it would be pretty obvious by over spray on the edges of prints, but on medium it'll increase grainyness or make things blurry. First time that happened to me it drove me nuts that I suddenly couldn't get a clean print, and that it was such a simple thing that I missed.

Not all media will have canned profiles, but you can experiment with ones for other materials with similar properties, generic ones... If you find something that works, in versaworks (think it's in their media explorer), you can't re-name a canned profile, but you can copy it, then you can re-name it for the media you want to use it for. In the copied version you can tweak settings and save, and if you have a spectro you can even calibrate it, and have your own custom profile.

Hi,

Tried most of this, dovyou have a suggested profile to download from media explorer? I'm using photo gloss paper right now.

Thanks for your response. I will do more testing later. Feel like giving up but will keep trying, just feels like such wasted inks.

 

[damonCA21]

I never get grainy prints on my Roland printer. I don't think my customers would accept print of that quality to be honest.
It does make a difference what you are printing. Printing a photo image you an get away with graininess to a degree, if you are printing a logo you want solid colours.
The trick is to print in high quality and overprint x2. This uses the smaller nozzles on the head, and also lays down more ink to make a solid colour that looks the same as screen printing, rather than having dots with gaps like you get on the lower settings. Ignore other profiles and use density control only as well

 

[Joe House]

If your expectations are high, having the printer properly calibrated is the first step. You also need to have the proper heat settings and the proper profile - it makes a difference. Also using the high quality print mode will help. I've never heard of the media your using, but proper media makes a difference too. If you bought it because of it's low price, don't expect Rembrandt quality products on it. Also, light inks make for smoother colors in lighter shades of your print. The SG doesn't have light colors so it has to space the dots farther apart to produce the appearance of a lighter color.
Making random adjustments without understanding what difference they will make is going to be frustrating. If your paper supplier won't or can't help you with this, I'd look to buy from someone who can. Or get a roll of the Roland photo paper and use that profile with their recommended settings to see what's possible with your printer.

Good Luck

 

[DL Signs]

Hi,

Tried most of this, dovyou have a suggested profile to download from media explorer? I'm using photo gloss paper right now.

Thanks for your response. I will do more testing later. Feel like giving up but will keep trying, just feels like such wasted inks.

To save ink, just make a smaller swatch of the most problematic color/ colors for testing, or just use scrap material if you have any laying around, that way you won't be using as much ink or media while you're troubleshooting. Since you just had a tech in, and if it does that on all media, there's always a chance he set something wrong too, because that's really grainy, and not normal. Even a generic profile on high quality shouldn't look that bad. Look at 3M or Oracal profiles for glossy photo, just to see if you get any difference, if not, I'd contact the company who sent the tech out to service it, or try Roland support.

 

[swarnes]

I never get grainy prints on my Roland printer. I don't think my customers would accept print of that quality to be honest.
It does make a difference what you are printing. Printing a photo image you an get away with graininess to a degree, if you are printing a logo you want solid colours.
The trick is to print in high quality and overprint x2. This uses the smaller nozzles on the head, and also lays down more ink to make a solid colour that looks the same as screen printing, rather than having dots with gaps like you get on the lower settings. Ignore other profiles and use density control only as well

Hi,

Will try this it's just putting print 2x where the nozzle speed is? Just out right now. Overprint 2x means it prints twice the same line? That's what I mean small logos and stuff with grain is my aim, and how it is now, you would get laughed out and no repeat business. Its why fine tuning it will be ideal.

Will test your method.

Thank you for the response.

 

[swarnes]

If your expectations are high, having the printer properly calibrated is the first step. You also need to have the proper heat settings and the proper profile - it makes a difference. Also using the high quality print mode will help. I've never heard of the media your using, but proper media makes a difference too. If you bought it because of it's low price, don't expect Rembrandt quality products on it. Also, light inks make for smoother colors in lighter shades of your print. The SG doesn't have light colors so it has to space the dots farther apart to produce the appearance of a lighter color.
Making random adjustments without understanding what difference they will make is going to be frustrating. If your paper supplier won't or can't help you with this, I'd look to buy from someone who can. Or get a roll of the Roland photo paper and use that profile with their recommended settings to see what's possible with your printer.

Good Luck

Hi, thank you for your response. The material is not cheapest. I will try contact the material supplier for profiles. Also will buy a suggested roll from Roland and update. Thanks for all the advice.