Help! Color issues when printing with Roland VS-300, grays come out pink and green

[psychopat]

Hey guys,

I purchased a used Roland VS-300 printer recently. I work in the video game business and I am familiar with the design side (using the Adobe suite). Was planning to use it for promotional material and video game arcade projects / restoration.

Initially when I first used the printer, the gray seemed ok. Then a few days later the same Versawork file started to print differently. By doing some cleaning I was still able to get the gray back, however the next day after when I was about to use it it was printing with a pink tint over again. I did tons of research trying to source the problem. Here's what I did so far:

1) Replaced all the ink cartridges for new ones (also shook them before inserting them)
*I did some searches on the forums and someone else had similar issues and it was due to the ink.

2) Initially when I was getting a pink tint, I was able to do a normal cleaning, medium, then 1 or 2 powerful cleaning (if necessary) until the colors were back to normal. However this no longer work now.
3) By printing test Roland files and also some print tests, it appears like the nozzles are ok (except the silver that is a bit clogged, the others seem good). However from my prints, I thought everything was tinted pink but I also noticed issues with dark colors and the gray using Roland charts. See my print tests here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38670017/20160314---print-test.jpg (also attached)

a) You can see that my prints all came out a little pink.
b) The dark colors seems to have some horizontal lines in them (its not showing here, but I get similar lines when I try printing solid metallic)
c) The grays printed and the ones from Roland chart are very different, mine came more green then gray, even the brown is gray and purple shows as blue.

Here's more details about my configuration:

• I have a this ink configuration: CMYK+ Lc+Lm+Mt+W (used to be double CMYK from previous owner)
• I am printing on 3O0RxAJET 3165GRA Rapid Air- White Gloss media using general vinyl 3 at high quality (tried other media as well and didnt notice any improvements)
• The previous owner replaced the cap tops and wipers
• I am using VersaWorks 5.10, tested from Windows 7 and Windows 10 with the same results
• Upgraded the firmware of the printer from 4.10 to the latest 5.10.

I went through all the Roland guides without any luck. I wanted to make sure it wasnt a color profile miss configuration. But the fact that my old VersaWorks job (without any changes) was working fine, and then it randomly appeared more pink later on, then worked after doing a cleaning, basically confirmed me that this wasn't a profile issue.

• How to print grays: http://support.rolanddga.com/docs/d...vices/manuals and guides/rvw_printinggrey.pdf
• Color management presets: http://support.rolanddga.com/docs/d...r_management_presets_in_roland_versaworks.pdf

Since I also got weird color issues (grays more green) using Roland test files. I am pretty convinced that it has to do with the printer. Other than that, it seems to be printing nice and crisp, only when printing dark it does some kind of micro-banding but I can print most images without grays and dark color and it comes out nice.

I did a lot of research on different forums, someone had similar problem and it was due to the ink cartridge which shouldnt be the case here since I just changed it. Others couldnt get it resolved and had to call a Roland technician. Some threads even mentioned that this seemed like a printer head problem (which I hope is not), especially since they are pricy and we just purchased the printer.

Would appreciate if you guys have any advice or tests that I should be doing to possibly figure out the problem and a possible way to fix it.

Thanks

 

[psychopat]

here's also a scan of different prints of the same color test. See how the gray changed from the old print to the new one (pink tint). This is from the same exact Versawork job.