Rolan VS 300i not printing grays

[Printer101]

I have some problems printing grays on my versacamm.
I did Roland test print and it came out with pink tint. Is it print head issues ?
I need to print some wall decals for kids. File is PNG format. There is one gray bunny which is printing in pure pink no matter how hard I try.
I'm using wall flair wall fabric material. I tried density control only and all other settings I could think of. No change at all. I also printed some grays from Roland color library and they came out as grays.
I did multiple prints to test and no matter what, on wall flair material bunnies are pink.
So I tried to save it in pdf and RGB format - no change, on wall flair material all pink.
I did test print with 4 different bunnies, from left to right : #1 bunny is png file , # 2 is vector traced in gray, #3 and #4 are vector traced full color bunnies.
I printed it on some t shirt vinyl and it came out pinkish but decent.
then I tried sign vinyl , only grayscale traced bunny came out as gray the rest are pink.
I tried on wall flair all bunnies are pink.
Can anyone help me solve this mystery ?

 

[garyroy]

I don't think it's a mystery. You are either going to have to make a very specific color profile for that particular printer and that particular wall flair material
or you're going to have to sub out the profile making to a guy who specializes in the field of color profiling. That's the best way to achieve the colors you want.

 

[Printer101]

I don't think it's a mystery. You are either going to have to make a very specific color profile for that particular printer and that particular wall flair material
or you're going to have to sub out the profile making to a guy who specializes in the field of color profiling. That's the best way to achieve the colors you want.

I don't think it will solve all my issues but I ll look into that.
Any .png or .jpg file with gray printing pink. On any material I use.
Only colors from Roland library print as grays nothing else.
I was wondering could it be printhead issue ? Since there is some pink in my color print test.
I never had this issue before. All my printing profiles used to work just fine as it is. Today I'm printing some stickers and they are printing pure pink instead of gray.

 

[Zoogee World]

I have a VS-300i and have the same issue with getting pinkish colors, therefore what I have done is I remove some magenta in the color settings in Versa Works, for me I find -3 Magenta works well, might be different for you.

 

[SlikGRFX]

If your test print is fine, I'm pretty sure it's a profile issue. Have a play with the color management in versaworks. The way the rip handles raster and vector images can be individually set.

 

[Printer101]

If your test print is fine, I'm pretty sure it's a profile issue. Have a play with the color management in versaworks. The way the rip handles raster and vector images can be individually set.

nozzle test is fine, but color test print is printing printing grays as pink. At the same time machine can print gray Roland spot colors no problem. I'm emailing with Roland tech support . So far we tried many different things and no improvement at all. Lets see what will happen. I ll post here if I ll find the solution.

 

[Printer101]

I have a VS-300i and have the same issue with getting pinkish colors, therefore what I have done is I remove some magenta in the color settings in Versa Works, for me I find -3 Magenta works well, might be different for you.

yes I tired that too. I reduced magenta but it didn't change anything. Still pink.

 

[Joe House]

Garyroy nailed it. Zoogee offered a workaround. Slick confirmed it. You can attack it one feature of color management at a time, or you could get a proper profile built for the media your printing on, done on your printer in your shop environment by someone who understands color management and then be able to confidently print jobs (within the limitations of your setup) knowing that the color will come out correctly.

 

[Solventinkjet]

nozzle test is fine, but color test print is printing printing grays as pink. At the same time machine can print gray Roland spot colors no problem. I'm emailing with Roland tech support . So far we tried many different things and no improvement at all. Lets see what will happen. I ll post here if I ll find the solution.

The RIP handles CMYK values and Spot colors differently so that makes sense. If you send a CMYK gray to the RIP it interprets its according to the color profile. So you might send 50% K to the RIP but it actually interprets it as 3%C 4%M 1%Y 57%K for example. But when you send a spot color it tells the RIP to override the profile and set the value to a saved preset. The best way to get perfect grays every time is to have custom profiles made.

 

[Printer101]

Garyroy nailed it. Zoogee offered a workaround. Slick confirmed it. You can attack it one feature of color management at a time, or you could get a proper profile built for the media your printing on, done on your printer in your shop environment by someone who understands color management and then be able to confidently print jobs (within the limitations of your setup) knowing that the color will come out correctly.

I understand. But I didn't have this issue before. I want to know if something wrong with my print head or not.
I used to print on sign vinyl and other type of wall vinyl without any issues. Right now even on sign vinyl it is printing in pink.

 

[Zoogee World]

I don't think it's the printhead, as I've had 2 heads in my printer and both always did it from the time I bought it new. I just learned to live with it, but if my work around isn't working for you, not even a little, our issues may be different even though they seem the same.

 

[McDonald Signs]

PRINTER LINEARIZATION? My Roland SC540 did the same think with printing greys a few years ago and I had to have a color tech guy come in and build new profiles for my printer.
My greys were printing with a green tint though, not pink tint. Every old profile I had printed greys with a green tint no matter what material I printed on.
But after the tech guy built new profiles it prints greys correctly.

 

[Printer101]

I don't think it's the printhead, as I've had 2 heads in my printer and both always did it from the time I bought it new. I just learned to live with it, but if my work around isn't working for you, not even a little, our issues may be different even though they seem the same.

interesting. I never had issues with gray. Earlier this year I printed Roland color test print and it was just perfect, Test print I did couple days ago has pink gradient instead of gray. when I reduce magenta in color setting it literally does nothing.

PRINTER LINEARIZATION? My Roland SC540 did the same think with printing greys a few years ago and I had to have a color tech guy come in and build new profiles for my printer.
My greys were printing with a green tint though, not pink tint. Every old profile I had printed greys with a green tint no matter what material I printed on.
But after the tech guy built new profiles it prints greys correctly.

I guess LINEARIZATION, is what I ll have to do. How can I find tech who can do it ? Was the tech who helped you from Roland

 

[ColorCrest]

Regardless if the OP’s issue is a faulty or failing head or not, if the OP was more experienced, the known quick fix would be to bring the machine back into a gray balance calibration. New profiles are entirely unnecessary and another matter altogether. Simply use the RIP’s calibration curve controls (which works exactly like Photoshop’s curves and most any other raster processor) to, in this case, begin by reducing the magenta ink delivery starting from mid-gray through the lighter tones. The uploaded print by the OP of Roland’s gray swatches clearly reveals the prescribed direction and area for the correction.

I recommend the OP not be shy about the initial curve move(s). It’s better to overshoot and pull back by ~50% increments until the grays are correct than spending time and materials on slight moves and never really learning where any limits are. Most all RIPS offer the opportunity at the calibration stage to image a test print which does not use any ICC profiles. Color printers are supposed to be calibrated to produce neutral grays on their own before relying upon ICC output profiles to further optimize colors.

The OP’s situation is tantamount to successfully performing a lot of songs using a good, tuned guitar until the instrument went out of tune. The OP should now be on the way to manually tuning the instrument which brings up another thread actually that I never had time to respond…

Roland VW-S1 Colour Match Tool - Looking for reviews
https://www.signs101.com/threads/ro...-tool-looking-for-reviews.169767/post-1579583

The so-called color match tool is just a densitometer and is the basic, typical tool used to read calibration densities of primary inks. Some promotional literature in the U.S. eludes that fact and mentions spectrophotometers in its verbiage. Don’t be fooled. Instead, find and study other official Roland sources which clearly label the tool as; “Roland DG Announces VW-S1 Densitometer for Easier, Less Costly Color Matching.” When two or more like printers are calibrated the same, chances are better that their prints will match. Using the relatively low cost tool is as basic and helpful as using a common guitar tuning device.

Forward ahead.

 

[Printer101]

Regardless if the OP’s issue is a faulty or failing head or not, if the OP was more experienced, the known quick fix would be to bring the machine back into a gray balance calibration. New profiles are entirely unnecessary and another matter altogether. Simply use the RIP’s calibration curve controls (which works exactly like Photoshop’s curves and most any other raster processor) to, in this case, begin by reducing the magenta ink delivery starting from mid-gray through the lighter tones. The uploaded print by the OP of Roland’s gray swatches clearly reveals the prescribed direction and area for the correction.

I recommend the OP not be shy about the initial curve move(s). It’s better to overshoot and pull back by ~50% increments until the grays are correct than spending time and materials on slight moves and never really learning where any limits are. Most all RIPS offer the opportunity at the calibration stage to image a test print which does not use any ICC profiles. Color printers are supposed to be calibrated to produce neutral grays on their own before relying upon ICC output profiles to further optimize colors.

The OP’s situation is tantamount to successfully performing a lot of songs using a good, tuned guitar until the instrument went out of tune. The OP should now be on the way to manually tuning the instrument which brings up another thread actually that I never had time to respond…

Roland VW-S1 Colour Match Tool - Looking for reviews
https://www.signs101.com/threads/ro...-tool-looking-for-reviews.169767/post-1579583

The so-called color match tool is just a densitometer and is the basic, typical tool used to read calibration densities of primary inks. Some promotional literature in the U.S. eludes that fact and mentions spectrophotometers in its verbiage. Don’t be fooled. Instead, find and study other official Roland sources which clearly label the tool as; “Roland DG Announces VW-S1 Densitometer for Easier, Less Costly Color Matching.” When two or more like printers are calibrated the same, chances are better that their prints will match. Using the relatively low cost tool is as basic and helpful as using a common guitar tuning device.

Forward ahead.

Hello, thank you so much for your reply and I ll be trying with curves. I ll report back if it works.

 

[Printer101]

Hi everyone. Thank you everyone who were trying to help me. I ll be honest with you , I been using my versacamm like a caveman. I never changed cap top in 4 years. After changing it my machine is printing better than ever and no more problems with gray color. So I fixed and no head replacement needed . I'm happy .
I'm just confused why Roland tech support never mentioned anything about cap top , not really a quality support. Could save me time .