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Roland Printers

Waves on loaded medium on VersaCamm SP540V

Posted by pilot on 22 July 2007 at 07:21

Hi to all,

from time to time, I have a problem with waves on the loaded medium – please see the picture below. Sometimes are the waves no problem during printing, but sometimes the quality of printing suffer on the wave.
What is the reason for this waves? Can I avoid it?

Thank you and best regards.

David Rowland replied 17 years, 7 months ago 10 Members · 16 Replies
16 Replies

David Rogers

Member
22 July 2007 at 12:22

Try FEWER media clamps, and don’t leave the vinyl sitting on the heaters when it’s idle / reduce the heat.

I’ve seen it occasionally on my cadet, but ONLY when I’ve left the media loaded, clamped & still being heated.

Dave
Chris Wool

Member
22 July 2007 at 21:56

as dave says really use 2 clamps for printing vinyl but all 4 for cutting when laminated.
high humidity plays a big part some makes are better than outers, some times i precondition the vinyl by feeding out over the heaters and back again around 4 ft.

chris
Shane Drew

Member
22 July 2007 at 22:36

I find this when the ambient temp is very cold. As chris says, some material is more prone than others. Should improve when the heaters do its work.
pilot

Member
23 July 2007 at 08:02

Thanks Dave,
this works brilliant. I was wondering about fewer clamps – the supplier highlighted to use every clamp – but it really works.

quote David Rogers:

Try FEWER media clamps, and don’t leave the vinyl sitting on the heaters when it’s idle / reduce the heat.

I’ve seen it occasionally on my cadet, but ONLY when I’ve left the media loaded, clamped & still being heated.

Dave
pilot

Member
23 July 2007 at 08:05

Chris and Shane, thanks for the fast help.
Mark Elvidge

Member
25 July 2007 at 19:55

you could also increase the vacuum power in the media settingd to hold the media to the bed.
Shane Drew

Member
25 July 2007 at 22:44

quote mark optimise:

you could also increase the vacuum power in the media settingd to hold the media to the bed.

Hi Mark, I’ve got mine set to maximum, makes little difference 😕
Gavin MacMillan

Member
26 July 2007 at 07:05

I find the vacuum makes a huge difference, printing banner without it on max is not really possible, maybe just the media I use, don’t really notice much difference with vinyl though.

G
Terry Furlong

Member
11 November 2007 at 18:47

We used to have this problem especially on long prints. Our 540 actually pulls the vinyl through slightly off line so on a long print it tends to run out slightly. If the clamps holding the roll in place don’t let the roll move from side to side then you get waves. I also found that if you move the roll about 4 inches away from the far right position you get less problems. Sometimes it runs off and gets jammed on the media clamp. We’ve also took the media clamps off.

I also read somewhere to roll out the vinyl when cutting to save wear. If i roll out about 4ft of 600m vinyl then it will run out over an inch and snag up. If i leave it on the roll its fine.
Chris Wool

Member
11 November 2007 at 22:00

terry you have a problem with either the way you load the vinyl or the rollers on the vinyl holder, what you described is not normal behavior.

chris
Shane Drew

Member
11 November 2007 at 22:22

quote Chris Wool:

terry you have a problem with either the way you load the vinyl or the rollers on the vinyl holder, what you described is not normal behavior.

chris

hhmm agree with that.

Perhaps your rollers are dirty.
David Rogers

Member
11 November 2007 at 23:18

quote Shane Drew:

quote Chris Wool:

terry you have a problem with either the way you load the vinyl or the rollers on the vinyl holder, what you described is not normal behavior.

chris

hhmm agree with that.

Perhaps your rollers are dirty.

Yeah, something seriously up there. I’ll easily print 3m or so without so much as a waver in tracking. Maybe the back media rollers are misaligned so it pulls in squint.
pilot

Member
12 November 2007 at 07:24

Yes, the rollers are important. We bought a set of new rollers, that are now provided in Versacamm VP. The rollers can be fixed to the medium and it works pretty good.
Peter Shaw

Member
12 November 2007 at 13:31

You should be able to get perfect tracking for long distances.

It is essential that the feed roll is exactly in line with the path through the machine, if it is not it will cause drag on one side.

I also never use those plastic insert roller things and only ever have 2 pinch rollers for printing.

Check that the metal guides are clean underneath. They can get glue which then causes drag.

Also ensure you have enough material out at the front, particularly with heavy materials such as banner. The initial push is sometimes reluctant until the material lays over the curve of the bed.

Peter
David Crocker

Member
25 February 2008 at 17:58

I have this problem from time to time and found that a few factors were involved.

They were…
1. print room temperature. Doing some prints first thing on a cold day would buckle the media, especially vinyl (i primarily print canvas)
2. the clamps were too close to the edge of the media for the print job, so i would bring them a lot closer and set my Base points accordingly.
3. the media wasnt coming off the roll properly.

Since these problems were addressed I havent had many ripples but a little trick i found was to either do a pre-feed or to unroll a lot of the media which would give some weight to the pre-feed and this did the trick also, especially with canvas.

Ive also used the long clamps on some media and this worked as well, I agree that having some extra media hanging out of the front of the machine can help too, i found that it gives extra weight. Ok you might waste a little but better that than to have a nasty misprint half way through a job 🙁

Cheers
dave.
David Rowland

Member
25 February 2008 at 23:30

well i would have said it was the sudden change from cold to hot… but i dont have this machine.
Also if you overcooking the material.