can anyone help with banding in sky areas on Mimaki JV3?

[PeterMcCallion]

Hello there,

I have found that the Mimaki JV3 that I use does not like printing large areas of gradient. I have tried printing skies on to banners and vinyl and like you I noticed horrible banding marks.

I would say that this is a limitation of the printer, you could however try editing the image in Photoshop.

Firstly, make sure that there is a percentage of ink going down on all area of the material, if you get a burnout (an area where pure white vinyl is showing through it will make the gradient harder to print) open the curves pallette (Cmd/Ctrl M) and put the % setting to start at 1% this will make sure that some ink goes down.

The second thing to do is to apply a Noise filter through the image.
Keep the % low but just enough to add a very small amount to the image. make sure the pattern is set to gaussian and monochromatic.

By doing this the printer will try to print all of the noise pattern. It wont be noticable when viewed on a sign and it will smooth out the gradient banding problem that you’re having on the sky.

[Bill McMurtry]

Try printing in one dot size mode as opposed to the normal 3 dot mode.

[Mathew Gibson]

What File are you saving as if done in photoshop make sure that the file has been flattened and try saving as a tiff this made a difference to me with a similar problem!! Hope this helps

[solteck]

quote Jeffrey Wons:

First, I owe everyone an apology for having not posted anything in quite some time.

My Mimaki JV3 75 SPII (with Epson printheads) does true photo quality printing except for the banding that is most noticeable in large sky areas.

I converted to six colors last year (Lc & Lm) and am happy with the gradations and overall excellence of the final product.

But, the banding is horrible in the sky areas, and very apparent.

I have done all the basics….

Does anyone have suggestions as support for Mimaki 6-color printing is not very good????

Jeff Wons
Expressionary Art
Kansas City, MO (USA)

—
Hi, Jeff,

I suggest that you should try to call some local printer engineer, who can make ICC profiles. Make a special ICC profiles, for your media and inks, I think you must not use original inks,right?

Kind regards,
Bevan

[Karl Williams]

I’ve had the same problem with my JV3. I had 2 print heads replaced last week and the engineer noticed the pump was faulty. This was replaced and now the gradients are perfect. There must have been a fault from day one as the printer prints perfect now.