Roland Colour Nightmare

[PrintItBig]

Hi,We have a Roland RE-640 and have issues with colour.If we print one thing on Monday and then the same thing on Tuesday the colour is quite often different. All settings, artwork, print material all exactly the same but the colour can and often does vary.That on it's own is frustrating enough but we could probably live with it. The main problem is we also get colour shifts in the same run. We do a lot of multi-panel type stuff (hoardings, exhibition panels etc) and the colour can often vary from panel to panel. These need to butt up against each other so it's very obvious. We did a small run of 3 panels recently with a yellow / gold bar of colour running across them. This bar ended up a different colour on each panel (Image attached). They were run all at the same time, one after the other with all settings the same.Does anyone have any ideas on what's causing this? Is this Versa-works or the printer itself? The printer is still under warranty so I'm going to call an engineer out again on Monday (last guy pretended he couldn't see any colour difference), just wanted to know if anyone had any suggestions?Thanks.

 

[Karen Souza]

I had similar problems and they replaced my dampers...not sure if thats all the tech did

 

[PrintItBig]

I had similar problems and they replaced my dampers...not sure if thats all the tech did

Thanks for the response.

Was your machine an RE?
Did changing the dampers resolve the issue?

Any other possible causes?

Thanks.

 

[P Wagner]

Most large-format printers will not print consistent color across the width of the print area. Inverting every other tile will ensure that the same physical side of the printer produces colors that end up butting to the next tile.

 

[PrintItBig]

Thanks but the colour is consistent across the width of the print, just not from panel to panel.

No side of panel 1, 2 or 3 matches any side of panel 1, 2 or 3 (if that makes any sense).

 

[DChorbowski]

A few ideas:

1: Is your printing environment consistent? Room temp, humidity, etc?
2: Is your artwork all vector or do you have some raster items like drop shadows or photos? If possible, you can try and rasterize everything before you send to versaworks and see if you get the same special defect.
3: Is it possible one of your panels may have a different color management preset than the others, or something less obvious under color management properties?

Another thing you can try is to set your tiles up manually rather than use the versaworks feature and print one by one.

 

[Karen Souza]

Thanks for the response.

Was your machine an RE?
Did changing the dampers resolve the issue?

Any other possible causes?

Thanks.

No, I have a VS540 ....but changing the dampers resolved it. Machine was about 1.5 years old when they did it.

 

[MichaelAlmand]

Having the same issue with our RE-640, Techs have tried everything....

we've had heater replaced, dampers, captops, head, etc... I have this issue with any tiled image whether its tiled in versa, illy, photoshop, corel. EPS or TIFF. The overlaps are being printed on the same side of printer (alternated) And we have a VP540 that will print the job with no issues. so it isn't humidity etc....

 

[MichaelAlmand]

This....and the joys of solvent printing. Our environment is controlled within a couple of degrees and a couple of % humidity and we still see huge color shifts between panels when they're printed at different times.

The only thing I can suggest is to make sure jobs are printed on the same roll....the same day. Otherwise it's a gamble.

We do that... Trust me mine is not related to humidity. Because the VP540 right next to it doesn't have this issue

 

[dlndesign]

+1 for Pat's post. I've seen it on Roland's, HP's, Seiko, Epsons... print the project the same day, same roll, or at lease use the same lot# if you have to print another roll. Its a gamble.

 

[MichaelAlmand]

+1 for Pat's post. I've seen it on Roland's, HP's, Seiko, Epsons... print the project the same day, same roll, or at lease use the same lot# if you have to print another roll. Its a gamble.

we do it that way it's not the issue.... Has something like ink starvation or a pump issue in my opinion. But we print panel after panel same roll all overlaps printed on same side of printer....

 

[TrevJonez]

Are you changing cartridges around where the bands occur? I have similar issues with my LEJ-640 from time to time. At the moment I think it has to do with air getting into the lines around the time i change cartridges. This is pure speculation since all of my machine is blacked out due to the UV ink.

 

[PrintItBig]

Thanks for the responses guys, particularly MichaelAlmand, it's nice to know we're not alone. There was also another guy on here a while ago called Lime84 that was having the same issues:

http://www.signs101.com/forums/showthread.php?105304-RE-640-floating-colour-tone-issue

He comments on that thread about knowing 2 other people also having the same issue, so that's 5 now.

To clarify, our environment is stable, we're in an office not an industrial unit. Our print material is kept next to the printer. The fist time I saw the problem I assumed it was because I'd set some panels to Sign And Display and some to Max Impact, so I reprinted the whole sequence again and made 100% sure that everything was the same. This second run came out worse than the first and not a single panel on either run matched. These were printed one after the other on the same roll of material.

Just the other day we were printing multiple copies of the same file (image attached). They were printed at the same time, same settings, same roll of material etc.

I can only assume it's some kind of fault with the Roland machines and the RE in particular. I'm sure I read somewhere they're prone to damper issues because of the vertical cartridges but you said you've had these changed Michael?

 

[TrevJonez]

Yea i'd be interested to head if it is a damper issue. Also closely inspect the manifold on the head.(the nipple the damper plugs onto) they are very fragile and a hairline fracture can cause dropouts like that too.

 

[splizaat]

Most large-format printers will not print consistent color across the width of the print area. Inverting every other tile will ensure that the same physical side of the printer produces colors that end up butting to the next tile.

Although I've never had to do it yet (we print smaller stuff) I've heard this is the answer, especially on solid color wraps. I THINK versa works has the option to invert alternating panels but I'm not sure where it is?

That color shift seems pretty significant tho

 

[TimToad]

If a job has multiple panels or even duplicates, the last thing we do before sending it to Versaworks is we tile everything into one file in the program we created it in and save that as our final print file. With all the risk of two different people not setting up a file EXACTLY the same on every front, document setup, presets, color profiles, saving as, save settings for .PDFs, etc. etc. etc. its too easy to miss something.

Hell, I've noticed a difference in color in for instance, an .eps that I create in Illustrator, hand off to my employee who for some reason feels the need to re-open EVERY single file I hand off in CorelDraw and then resave and send to the RIP. What exactly he's looking for, or trying to correct, is beyond me. Our protocol is we don't name anything PRINT or FINAL PRINT, etc. until it is 100% ready to be sent to the RIP.

We just find it safer and more predictable to gang everything up on the work station it was created on. Plus, the software for our flatbed (Postershop) is really weak and I hate its entire UI, so I just got into the habit of sending only ready to RIP files to the server controlling the Roland and our ION.

 

[kffernandez]

if this happened to me, and i suspect ink starvation, i would first print CMYK bars [8"-10" thick at least throughout the width of the printer] and set them aside. i will then start printing. those 2 sets of prints will be my baseline.

now, when a color shift occurs, i will then re-print my cmyk bars to see which color is shifting. hopefully, i can occularly detect any shift in color, and troubleshoot from there.

kelly

 

[premiercolour]

You probably do. Are you using Roland Eco Sol Max inks?

Other things I could think about: Dampers, cap tops, manifolds. I like what Kelly suggested. That's a way to go after making sure all above components are in good working order.

Damper $6.75 (made in Korea)
http://www.premiercolour.com/damper-regular/

Roland Cap top $37.50 (original from Roland) Yes costs more but in stock
http://www.premiercolour.com/roland-genuine-cap-top-dx4-printhead/

Printhead Manifold $22.50 ( made in Korea)
http://www.premiercolour.com/solvent-head-manifold-for-epson-dx4-printhead/

We find components made in Korea has much higher chance succeed in quality. Anything that touches head, we use oem.


Francis

 

[AF]

Tossing out another thing to check: voltage. If your voltage to the machine is not clean / stable then I would expect obscure and unpredictable issues. Also, the power supply on the printer is worth validating.

 

[splizaat]

if this happened to me, and i suspect ink starvation, i would first print CMYK bars [8"-10" thick at least throughout the width of the printer] and set them aside. i will then start printing. those 2 sets of prints will be my baseline.

now, when a color shift occurs, i will then re-print my cmyk bars to see which color is shifting. hopefully, i can occularly detect any shift in color, and troubleshoot from there.

kelly

I gotta say....this idea right here is actually pretty brilliant.

 

[VBFlyer]

Roland Color shift

I have the same problem today with a 9 month old Roland VS-540i. Printed 5 of 8 panels of a wall wrap and shut down for the day. Next morning ran cleaning and started printing panel #6. 2/3 of the way through it started printing the dark blue noticeably lighter, in 2 inch bands, then kept printing at the lighter color. All 8 ink cartridges were new or at lest 90% full when I started the job. Sure looks like ink starvation of some sort to me, internally. Maybe Roland has a strategy for printing long runs, but I have never seen one. Perhaps printing in un-directional only to allow ink to have a chance to equalize in the lines?
Also, when I first started running it printed the first panel fine, then partially into the second print it went into a cleaning cycle, which was set at intervals of 90 minutes. The color shifted after the cleaning. I set the cleaning cycle to run after each page and that solved that problem.
Help us out here, Roland. Write a white paper and set out some guidelines on the proper method to print these long jobs that require consistent color from front to back.

On a side note, I have 3 Canon large format printers and they don't have any of these color shifting problems. They are rock solid, all the time.

 

[splizaat]

I have the same problem today with a 9 month old Roland VS-540i. Printed 5 of 8 panels of a wall wrap and shut down for the day. Next morning ran cleaning and started printing panel #6. 2/3 of the way through it started printing the dark blue noticeably lighter, in 2 inch bands, then kept printing at the lighter color. All 8 ink cartridges were new or at lest 90% full when I started the job. Sure looks like ink starvation of some sort to me, internally. Maybe Roland has a strategy for printing long runs, but I have never seen one. Perhaps printing in un-directional only to allow ink to have a chance to equalize in the lines?
Also, when I first started running it printed the first panel fine, then partially into the second print it went into a cleaning cycle, which was set at intervals of 90 minutes. The color shifted after the cleaning. I set the cleaning cycle to run after each page and that solved that problem.
Help us out here, Roland. Write a white paper and set out some guidelines on the proper method to print these long jobs that require consistent color from front to back.

On a side note, I have 3 Canon large format printers and they don't have any of these color shifting problems. They are rock solid, all the time.

Have you reprinted that same panel that's shifting? if so, is it shifting in the same spot? or does it change every time?