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Pop-up skew/stretch printing problem on JV33-160 (RL4)
Hello everyone,
I wonder if you can help me out here?
We use our JV33-160 running Rasterlink Pro 4 to print most of our vinyl and banner work, which it copes with admirably.However, we have a recurring problem when printing pop-up drops.
On occasion we realise upon trimming that the drops don’t line up accurately and when butting together it appears that certain parts of the artwork are shrinking or stretching.We initially had a problem with the feed/take-up balance which caused the silver backed light-stop to wander from sideways on the bed up to 30mm left or right! As expected this caused the graphics to stretch and skew over the length of each drop and resulted in some written off panels.
However, after making adjustments mechanically and tweaking the take up clutch, I am fairly confident this is now not the problem.The current misalignment problem occurs over much shorter distances and is only evident well into finishing. We are wondering whether this is a RIP problem now, the most recent job was from a PDF file. We have run from TIFF, EPS, JPG and PDF in the past and it’s hard to determine which ones produced this problem.
Is there anyone here who’s had the same problem, or anyone who prints pop-ups without this problem on the same set-up? Please help, I’m tearing my hair out here!
Thanks in advance!
Chris B -
6 Replies
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mod-edit please read board rules
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To be honest no, this is not a clear problem with simple answers, I have a JV33 and do see a bit of side to side wander on the thicker 300micron litestop, however recently completted a jumbo poup at 3M tall and they all lined up pefectly for a very fussy customer.
I have had problems with lineer calibration making them to long to fit bit all panels where the same so image still aligned.
My only advice and i am sure you do this already is to line it up carefully at the start.
Regards
Russell.
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i dont think it will solve ur issue, but what does a spirit level say?
also i am presuming your metal guides are moving, if so is it always the same one? -
We had a customer with the exact same problem, and it took a bit of work to get to the bottom of it. We tested with a variety of different types of material, and there was a ‘banana’ effect in the print only on the pop-up material.
They were using a particular brand of pop-up media. In the end they switched to a different brand, and the problem disappeared. What was strange that other customers with the same machine had no problems with the brand that was causing the problem for this customer !
At this point the customer was happy that his issue was resolved, and didn’t want to look into it any further as he had a lot of work to catch up on.
Mike.
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Thank you for taking the time to reply guys, much appreciated.
Russell –
Our feed calibration is as good as we can get it, no obvious signs of banding however the graphics are often approx 5mm longer than specified across the board.
We always set up the machine carefully to hybrids recommendation, i.e pulling the material through and round the take-up and squaring with the roll at the back of the machine before clamping.Dave –
I’ve yet to try a level on the machine, but it hasn’t been moved since it was installed 18 months ago by GPT/Hybrid. I will check though. Interestingly it has wandered both ways, shifting either metal guides. As a matter of course now, I mark the sheet edges on the bed with a graphite pencil so I can closely monitor the shifting.Michael –
Slightly worrying to hear that, because it suggests there are variations in the quality of individual machines built to the same specifications. Incidentally, this is the second pop-up material where this has been a problem. The first was a white-backed 430mic stock which was dropped because we believed the problems were caused by the weight. The replacement 300mic silver backed material initially seemed better until these problems reoccurred. (these were both from one supplier)I can’t think of much else to try other than a new brand of material from a different supplier and check the level of the machine.
Kind Regards,
Chris(p.s. Sorry if i broke the rules by bumping the post, even if it did help get some replies. Consider myself spanked.)
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This sounds like it’s going to be a tricky one to sort. It really is going to be a process of elimination.
First of all, your printer should still be under warranty if it’s only 18 minths old so make sure this fault is flagged to the relevant sources before the warranty runs out.
What RIP are you running? Are you measuring from crop to crop or the image boundaries? If measuring the image boundaries, you may find that the RIP will introduce a small amount of white space to the file, which of course will be magnified when scaling up to nearly 3m.
I have seen media slip on many different printers when using popup materials with the shiney backing and some people use heavy magnets stuck to the front of the printer on both edges of the media (remembering to stay clear of the head travel of course) to keep it running true. That combined with the trick you mentioed earlier from Hybrid by loading the takeup before clamping the media, should stop any wondering. It’s also worth looking at the side of the printed image for any stepping that may be the result of a dirty encoder strip/sensor?
Not much of a fix I’m afraid but could be used as a get around….?
Best of luck
Stafford
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