Help - Mimaki Jv3 160SP

[steeltech]

I offered to help a friend print her vehicle wraps on my machine. I dont print any myself, but she is supplying me with ink, material and advice on the profiles to use. Her artwork is Tiff. file. The problem Im having is the colors are off. The black outlines are streaky and rigid, like a fine comb went through the ink. I replicated a mock vector graphic that mirrored her gradient and contour thickness to test if her images were the cause. Even the vector fonts I myself made are having the same error. When I pull open a file of a graphic that is solid black, it prints smooth and no streaks in the lines. Does anyone know what this might be, I am badly delayed. I cannot explain it to her and Im just getting frustrated. Its nearly midnight and I have been having trouble since this afternoon. The tubelite tech told me to go ahead and use an oracal profile if the quality looks better than the Avery profile. Im lost. Does anyone know of this issue?

 

[artbot]

please send a photo of the issue that you are getting from the machine. many of these issues can be quickly diagnosed by seeing the print. it is better to scan the print than to photograph (better focus up close).

 

[steeltech]

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[tomence]

How is the test print. Can you upload a pic. To me this looks like some nozzles are not firing, so do a test print and upload it here.

 

[steeltech]

Ive even created a small box and circle and filled it with black, and those print the same way. I went to an old job and pulled a 1-color decal and printed those and they produced smooth and typical results for me. This thing has me baffled. Ive taken her Tiff image into photoshop and saved it as a PDF and I still produce the same streaky error. Bizarre. Images are printing this way, but not vector graphics. The software is FlexiSIGN PRO v10.5.1 if thats of importance.

 

[steeltech]

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[steeltech]

Printed on same settings, same material - simple one-color (black) Vector graphic and no issues.

 

[artbot]

i'd do one more test. have it print a vector gradient. one odd thing about these epson heads is they can be fine printing the "full dot" but the variable dot portion of the head's electronics will fail. if it prints a vector gradient cleanly, i'd start looking at the rip. if the vector gradient causes some bad data/printing the head may be suspect.

is it only in the black? because a rip issue should cause the issue across all channels. also, you can do a data swap and run that black data to a different head (magenta) to see if the magenta does the same thing.

i'd suggest you draw up a more diagnostic image to use for testing. 1x1 squares of CMYK, some fine black grids, a gradient, etc. it will be easier to isolate individual head performance that way.

 

[steeltech]

Update:

Ive since gotten the images to print without the distortion. My problems were occurring in the Flexi file I created. After some experimenting, I tried making boxes of CMYK. I noticed something odd, the colors looked dull and puky on my screen, yet in CorelDRAW I had files up the colors looked fine. When I would fill a box with Cyan, I would get an error symbol (color not in gamut). I would get that error for CMY but not the black. I opened another file in Flexi and imported the same TIFF image, and also created three boxes of CMY. The colors were restored, and no error messages in my color mixer. Im not sure what the problem was in the original file I created, and if someone knows what I did to cause that I would gladly appreciate a tip on what I did wrong. I wasnt designing or changing any colors, I was only opening the file and sending it to RIP, so Im unsure what I could have done to cause such a problem. Perhaps a bug in Flexi? Or as I often suspect, human error? Anyways, thank you all for your tips and comments. Appreciate it as always. maybe this thread will help someone else down the road.

 

[artbot]

are you discussing the "puky" color as the gamut warning option in photoshop?