-
Which printer gives best quality Disappointed with mine
I am wondering which printer gives the best quality of print?
I bought a rockhopper 38 last year and have been pretty disappointed in the quality of print. From a few feet away the print looks ok, but if you look closely then the quality is quite poor. You can see banding where it has printed. The heads have now gone on it and I’ve just bought new heads to replace them. I don’t know if this will give me good print once changed?
I recently bought a Roland PC60. I expected the print quality on this to be excellent, but I am very disappointed with the quality. Again from a feet or so away it looks ok, but if you look closely you can see it is quite "grainy"
Before I jump in and buy something else I wont be happy with, can anyone please tell me if they’re getting good print from their printer? If you look closely can you see banding or the grainy look?
thanks
-
10 Replies
-
Quality is in the eye of the beholder
it does make a difference to print quality depending on your rip settings
its not usually the printer that is at fault, it only does what you tell it to do.
what rip are you using, and what profiles?
Peter
-
If the Rock Hopper 38 is set up & running correctly it produces an excellent print. It is all too easy to condemn a machine when it is actually operator error, The RH uses the same technology as the earlier Roland, Mimaki machines etc. At the end of the day you can buy a new machine but if you run it with the wrong profiles, speeds & dpi etc then it will print bad as well. Obviously if it requires heads then print will be bad as well, it is not a straight forward operation to change & set up heads on the RH either.
Kev
-
Quality is in the eye of the Beer holder – i think you’ll find :vomit:
-
quote John Gregson:Quality is in the eye of the Beer holder – i think you’ll find :vomit:
John.
it depends on how you evaluate the morning after….Peter
-
Just an observation on the PC60, its quite good at ‘spot colours’ but the halftone pattern when doing anything else is not up to todays standards.
Oo
-
Banding is caused by incorrect feed calibration not the printer.
-
I had a PC60 and was more than happy with the results using vector files, but halftones and anything else was very poor.
Banding on the rockhopper is probably calibration, but if its got dud heads that will not help.
May pay to invest in a technician to come out and give it the once over. Unfortunately fixing one problem can introduce other problems if you don’t really know what you are doing.
It could a simple situation that you are printing too fast. Any number of scenarios will produce similar results.
I pay a technician to do a full check on both my machines every 6 months on average. Well worth the investment, and the machines run like new when he leaves.
-
Can’t speak for the Rock Hopper- but if you do decide to purchase a new machine – DEFINITLEY get a 54" atleast. You’ll very very quickly grow out of the 38" and find you’ll be cursing the small print area quite fast!
-
How do you go about getting a correct feed calibration?
-
We have the new Roland VersaArt RS 640 and love the print quality we get from it. I would imagine that the new Mimaki JV33 would also give you outstanding prints. But I wonder which one is better? Our relatively new Roland XJ-740 does not give us the same quality as the versaArt, maybe because it prints much faster.
I would agree that the feed calibration plays a part in getting good print quality. And also, the quality of the vinyl substrate itself is also a factor. Sometimes, we need to wipe the vinyl banner material with a piece of cloth and this also helps in getting good quality prints.
Log in to reply.