Need Help Roland SP-300v printing gradients very blocky

[dsstrainer]

I have an SP300v that I've been using for the past 6 months. It prints great colors for most things, but certain gradients tend to always show as "blocky" instead of a smooth gradient.

I've attached the gradient source and resulting print. Note that the resulting print probably looks worse due to my using my phone but ignoring the grainy part and just noticing the blocky part is the issue. The rest of the print looks great, it's only the gradients that seem to do this blocking or chunking. I'm assuming its maybe an ICC profile thing but not sure what to do about it.
I use Oracal white matte vinyl and read that a lot of people just use the standard Oracal 3651G_CMYK output profile which has been working great for me overall.

I used to get these graphics printed from a guy that used a Roland XC-540 printer which never had this issue but I'm not sure its a printer problem persay.

 

[dsstrainer]

Here's my full flexi profile settings.. maybe dithertype or something would help

 

[Solventinkjet]

Try some different profiles. Specifically look for one that is variable dot, and has a bit depth of at least 16 bits. Should smooth out the transition.

 

[Solventinkjet]

I didn't see your picture in the second post until after I posted. So you are using a 2 bit profile. Look for one closer to 16 if possible.

 

[dsstrainer]

I'm not sure that's an option for my printer. Seems like 2bit is the highest it goes

 

[Solventinkjet]

I'm not sure why your only options are 2 bit. Maybe the RIP is old or maybe this machine doesn't support it but I know for sure that 2 bit color mode isn't going to produce smooth gradients.

 

[IsItFasst]

I used to have this problem often but since I got a good profile going I can't remember the the last time I seen it. A fix for now (assuming this is a vector gradient) is you can create a rectangle and then fill it with the gradient then rasterize it. Then create a mask using the letters. For whatever reason with the gradient as an image used to always print better when I had this issue.

 

[SignsBES]

I have an SP300v that I've been using for the past 6 months. It prints great colors for most things, but certain gradients tend to always show as "blocky" instead of a smooth gradient.

I've attached the gradient source and resulting print. Note that the resulting print probably looks worse due to my using my phone but ignoring the grainy part and just noticing the blocky part is the issue. The rest of the print looks great, it's only the gradients that seem to do this blocking or chunking. I'm assuming its maybe an ICC profile thing but not sure what to do about it.
I use Oracal white matte vinyl and read that a lot of people just use the standard Oracal 3651G_CMYK output profile which has been working great for me overall.

I used to get these graphics printed from a guy that used a Roland XC-540 printer which never had this issue but I'm not sure its a printer problem persay.

I think this is a transparency issue, not a printer issue. In what program did you create your file and to what format did you save?

 

[dsstrainer]

I think this is a transparency issue, not a printer issue. In what program did you create your file and to what format did you save?

It's a jpg 150 dpi from photoshop.... its the same file that I've used many times with other printers (they had an XC 540) and it worked fine there. So I don't think its the file