Starting to show banding

[Pinfinity]

Need some help. I own a Mutoh 1204. recent purchase...not a lot of use yet.
I'm always on top of cleaning head, main.stat, spit tray and waste tank religiously.

Printer was working fine untill today. I'm am seeing some horizontal banding in some of the colors, like process blue and black for example. It's not white but it looks like a footprint spaced evenly 1/4" apart.

Nozzel check looks good. Using oracal 3651 white 5 yr material. setting 720 dpi. Don't know what else I could do. Love the printer, treat it like gold.

Any suggestions?

 

[Signsforwhile]

photos?

 

[Pinfinity]

Ok good...I'll take a couple of shots n post em..thanx

 

[Pinfinity]

Banding photos 1204

I attached a couple of pics showing the banding problem that has just started with my printer. Again, it seems more prevelant in certain colors.
I hope the pics are visable enough to see the issue, although, the one on the right is a little blurry.

Thanks for any assistance.

 

[AUTO-FX]

Is it like that no matter what profile you try?

 

[Pinfinity]

Auto I haven't tried any other profiles...what do you suggest?

 

[AUTO-FX]

i'm suggesting that you may not be using the proper profile for the media you're printing on.
If you think profile has nothing to do with it, Have you tried to isolate the problem to any particular color? Try printing individual pure hue swatches in each color to see if it is a particular channel that is causing the problem.

 

[Pinfinity]

Ok, Auto...I'll do some testing and let you know what happens. Bare with me, I'm a newbie with this equipment and just learning slowly. I do know I haven't changed the profile since I owned the printer..and I have been using the same print material as well as my design program with no issues till now. I just performed a clean, and will follow your advise and see what develops. thank you

 

[AUTO-FX]

OK, so nothing has changed up to this point, same profile, same vinyl?
Are you in fact using a profile that matches the media?
Are you heat settings correct? (Some profiles suggest the best settings)
I have found that higher settings work best on my older machine. I go as high as I can before the vinyl wrinkles too much.
OK, so, if after trying an alternate profile, nothing improves, than it may just need a little cleaning, especially since you dont use it daily. I think most solvent and ecosolvent printers work better the more they are kept operating.
Try the isolation with the pure hue swatches trick if you cant clear it up after a few cleanings and some printing. Then you can target a more aggressive approach to the problem color / colors .

 

[Mike Paul]

Ive run into that with certain colors like purple. Printing on high quality instead of standard usually is a quick fix.

 

[Pinfinity]

thanks guys...the only way to learn is here, I see a lot of posts with mega probs with digital equip here, makes me paranoid to go outside the box. Let me mess with the high res setting and a couple of cleanings...again, I'm so anal with cleaning the printer and setting the printhead down when not using. You would think I just bought a Ferrari..lol and afraid to drive it. By the way current setting is 720. I'm gonna open the hood now. Let ya know what happens!

 

[msenjur]

i get these stripes sometimes... always same profile, on different colors... on next print, they are gone... what causes them??

 

[Pinfinity]

msenjur...I have exactly your iden problem. Go figure, sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not. I'm trying some of the advise above and see what happens

 

[Jim Hancock]

Which direction are the banding lines, in the printhead movement direction (horizontal) or the feed direction (vertical)? I would suggest adjusting the media feed compensation. It's called Distance Adjust in the Mutoh. On most printers using straight line pass printing, you see light or dark lines when the media feed is incorrect. When using one of the wave patterns on the Mutoh, feed compensation not being correct looks like what you are getting.

 

[Pinfinity]

Thanx Jim...I believe the bands are from the horizontal printhead direction. As the material feeds out front of the printer the bands are showin across the material horizontally.

 

[Jim Hancock]

Don't remember for sure which way the lines show when the dist adj is off, but give it a shot and let us know... I believe the effect is a harmonic of the wave pattern when the feeding distance isn't correct. Keep in mind that this setting can change the actual length of the file, so once you get it corrected, you may want to run some tests to get a correction percentage on files that are length critical. And never change the media feed or distance adjust in the middle of a tiled job, because they will never line up.

 

[FatCat]

Ditto on the PF adjustment, but another thing is have you cleaned your rails lately? I started getting some weird banding last year until I was told I need to be cleaning and lubing the rails on a monthly basis. Dirt, dust etc can build up on the rails and effect the smoothness of the head going back and forth and can affect your print quality.

Just wipe it down with some denatured alcohol and then put a light (very light) coat of 3 in 1 oil or you can buy the specifically made Mutoh lube.

Just something to consider...