VG-540i does not print cut properly

[Studio10 Signs & Designs]

Good Afternoon
I am having a problem with Roland. I bought a new machine 2 years ago, sg-540, i had so many problems they replaced my original purchase with the same machine (2 new machines at this point) same things started again on the second machine and they upgraded my machine to vg-540i; and now it doesnt work and Roland will not even contact me to give me help. They waited until my warranty ran out and now want me to pay for technical support. What the machine is doing is i am printing and cutting labels 77 at a time in 54x60" of material the print is fine when it goes back to cut after i laminate it wont work correctly. i attached pictures. basically out of 77 i get 10 that i can give my customer.

Question 1 does anyone else have this much trouble with roland?
question 2 can anyone guide me on how to fix this problem?
thanks
Kristie

 

[ewded]

Hi Kristie,

You should have done your research two years earlier as there are many many posts here about truevis being junk. If your prints are acceptable you can buy a used Mimaki CG-130 FX or similar to cut the prints, they are solid, reliable machines. Yet better try to sell the printer and buy a Mimaki CJV150 instead or Epson 60600 (80600 if you can afford)

 

[Studio10 Signs & Designs]

Hi Kristie,

You should have done your research two years earlier as there are many many posts here about truevis being junk. If your prints are acceptable you can buy a used Mimaki CG-130 FX or similar to cut the prints, they are solid, reliable machines. Yet better try to sell the printer and buy a Mimaki CJV150 instead or Epson 60600 (80600 if you can afford)

 

[Studio10 Signs & Designs]

I had a roland for 9 years that worked great. I still havent. We had a silo explode and the whole city surged and that printer got nuked so i thought. Turns out it was $75 dollars worth of parts which im currently trying to get. Again not getting help from roland. They actually tried to feed me a line of crap saying i couldnt print on 3m material. They wont refund my money which i asked for. It has been nothing but a money pit and the run around.

 

[CanuckSigns]

We bought one of the first vg640 machines when they were released, it was amazingly good...for 6 months, then it started going through print heads on a weekly basis, after Roland replaced 8 heads I convinced them to swap out the machine for another of the same.

The new machine printed ok but could not cut accuratly to save it's life, very similar results to your photos, cuts off by almost 0.5 inche in some spots, bang on in others. After a few months of troubleshooting with the tech ( while wasting my ink and vinyl to test all their silly "solutions") they agreed to send me another VG 640.

The third machine was kept at the techs shop for a month where he apparently tested it and it was "perfect" as soon as he delivered it it started acting up.

In the end, my dealer bought back the printer with their own money, Roland wouldn't stand behind the machine, but my tech did the right thing and made me whole.

Throughout the whole ordeal, Roland was useless, they had no solutions, the only thing them seemed to be able to do was ask the tech to take peck reports, which I think was their way of stalling.

The Truth Vis printers are not the same as previous Roland machines, prior to our Tru vis we had only run Roland's for the previous 12 years and they were great. Then in order to compete with HP, Roland decides to completely redo all the guts of the VG printers to all untested tech, and it has come back to bite them in the ass.

 

[Studio10 Signs & Designs]

We bought one of the first vg640 machines when they were released, it was amazingly good...for 6 months, then it started going through print heads on a weekly basis, after Roland replaced 8 heads I convinced them to swap out the machine for another of the same.

The new machine printed ok but could not cut accuratly to save it's life, very similar results to your photos, cuts off by almost 0.5 inche in some spots, bang on in others. After a few months of troubleshooting with the tech ( while wasting my ink and vinyl to test all their silly "solutions") they agreed to send me another VG 640.

The third machine was kept at the techs shop for a month where he apparently tested it and it was "perfect" as soon as he delivered it it started acting up.

In the end, my dealer bought back the printer with their own money, Roland wouldn't stand behind the machine, but my tech did the right thing and made me whole.

Throughout the whole ordeal, Roland was useless, they had no solutions, the only thing them seemed to be able to do was ask the tech to take peck reports, which I think was their way of stalling.

The Truth Vis printers are not the same as previous Roland machines, prior to our Tru vis we had only run Roland's for the previous 12 years and they were great. Then in order to compete with HP, Roland decides to completely redo all the guts of the VG printers to all untested tech, and it has come back to bite them in the ***.

WOW!! I feel like i am going to have to get a lawyer to get this resolved. What did you end up getting?

 

[CanuckSigns]

WOW!! I feel like i am going to have to get a lawyer to get this resolved. What did you end up getting?

We ended up with a Epson S80600 and a graphtec plotter, couldn't be happier.

 

[Mainframe]

Make sure the media holders in the rear are out of the way, slide them all the way to the ends, also remove the media roll in the back, I also turn the heaters off when I cut, other than that, I don't have any other suggestions.

 

[jesselopez5000]

This may be irrelevant but when I had a GR-540 it came with a metal blade holder. I assumed that would be "better" so I put it in my VSi to do a test to compare to the standard plastic holder. The results were just like your photos. Switching back to plastic with the same blade gave me excellent cuts. I know the GRs and TruVis have the same cutting mechanism so I wonder what the results would be if you tried a plastic holder??? I ended up returning my GR and taking a slight loss on the finance side. Good luck.

 

[Ymmit]

Hi Kristie,

If you haven't tried already....deselect centre on the media, in versaworks, so the print is not centered on the media. I have found that this helps with the print & cut accuracy on my VG540. Also for the print, laminate, cut jobs I tend to try and line the sheet back up as close as possible to where it was when it printed & again, make sure the print is not centered on media. As in the pictures..line up the dots and the red pen mark on the masking tape is the roll edge. This worked really well a few months ago for a job we had to laminate & cut. The roll width in versaworks was around 1297mm + / - . I would also tend to make them shorter runs for the laminate & cut jobs. If you went 54 x 30/36 it might help too. Hope this is of some help.

I forgot to add..when laminating & cutting don't use get media width button in versaworks..input the roll width manually!

 

[advision]

So this looks like an issue I've been running into on my VG-540. I've had two different causes.

One is user error so I'll start with that one. It sounds stupid but check and make sure the thumbscrew on the blade holder is tight. I was having off center cuts for a while and turns out it was slightly loose causing a small amount of play in the holder. I felt like a supreme idiot when I finally figured that out. Just glad I didn't call out our tech on it.

So now for the big one. Our machine is chronically breaking the housing on the pinch roller closest to the capping station. It's a small micro crack that is very hard to see. Our tech just replaced the third one in under two years. It causes drifting during cutting but not during printing. With the cuts looking very similar to yours. We got lucky our eagle eyed tech saw it after she had tried a bunch of other attempts at solutions to no avail. That is the first thing I check when our machine starts to lose accuracy on the cut. I've attached a photo of the crack.

It's not an easy fix as the machine has to be disassembled to replace that roller assembly, but it's just removal of screws so I think as long as you're careful it could be user serviceable. I don't think you have to disconnect any electronics or anything, but I'm not 100% sure on that. I'd expect to spend most of a day on it on your first try though.

When it's not cracked the accuracy is superb.

I'm told there will be no attempt made to address the root cause so I'll just have to deal with the week of downtime every half year or so until I get a new machine eventually. I'm gonna see if we can't get our distributor to stock the roller assembly so that the next time it happens we don't have to wait for the shipment from Roland, but I don't have my hopes up.