Mimaki CJV150 printing grainy/faded

[Adam Wilson]

I have a Mimaki CJV150 which had a new printhead installed last year. Has been working fine up to about a week ago. The Test print shows that all nozzles are perfectly fine but the print comes out very grainy. Has anyone got any tips?

 

[Solventinkjet]

Looks like a material issue to me. Can't think of anything printer related that would cause that. Have you tried another material?

 

[Adam Wilson]

Looks like a material issue to me. Can't think of anything printer related that would cause that. Have you tried another material?

We use Metamark MDC using their profiles are sometimes 3M profiles. Always 720x1440 and 34 passes and uni directional. We've always used this media with no issues so seems odd to me. Could be it a temperature problem due to how hot it's been here the past few days? I've just changed the halftone setting in rasterlink from default to MFD and it has improved the colours a bit more

 

[Solventinkjet]

We use Metamark MDC using their profiles are sometimes 3M profiles. Always 720x1440 and 34 passes and uni directional. We've always used this media with no issues so seems odd to me. Could be it a temperature problem due to how hot it's been here the past few days? I've just changed the halftone setting in rasterlink from default to MFD and it has improved the colours a bit more

Even the highest quality vinyl can have a bad batch or the supplier had it on the shelf for too long. It looks like classic plasticizer leakage to me. But it could be temperature possibly. These machines do have an operating temperature range. Off the top of my head it's usually around 65-80 degrees.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

. Always 720x1440 and 34 passes and uni directional.

Why? That'd take forever and a day to print anything like that.
Run a print test and see what it looks like rather than the solid block. We had an ink issue and a few others here had similar problems. Need to see nozzle test though

 

[Adam Wilson]

Even the highest quality vinyl can have a bad batch or the supplier had it on the shelf for too long. It looks like classic plasticizer leakage to me. But it could be temperature possibly. These machines do have an operating temperature range. Off the top of my head it's usually around 65-80 degrees.

Just seems odd that i've used this roll of vinyl for quite a few weeks perfectly. Perhaps the heat has affected it then? I'll re-try today.

 

[Adam Wilson]

Why? That'd take forever and a day to print anything like that.
Run a print test and see what it looks like rather than the solid block. We had an ink issue and a few others here had similar problems. Need to see nozzle test though

Most of the designs we print are small so we don't mind how long it takes to print. Nozzle test has come back all fine which is what is confusing me.

 

[ewded]

Why? That'd take forever and a day to print anything like that.
Run a print test and see what it looks like rather than the solid block. We had an ink issue and a few others here had similar problems. Need to see nozzle test though

I do something similar when there is a "rush" job that need to leave the shop by the end of the day, stays longer on the heater element. FYI Metamark is a UK brand, one of the shittiest quality materials with frequent defects both in print and cut vinyl.

 

[Adam Wilson]

The thing is we have used this media for a while and always prints fine. It's not like it's a new faulty roll, we are half way through it. I've taken some more images. Nozzle is printing fine, but all colours are printing bad. Also these are all eps vector files so quality is normally pefect.