Roland SC 545 ghosting problem, help needed please.

[Kevin Flowers]

Lee
have you done all of the alignment steps, you have obviously had the head out so head alignment is required and bias etc done from the service menu not the bias for media

Kev

[Lee Pitcher]

Hi Kevin. Cheers for your quick reply. I haven’t
Set them up as I don’t have any instructions. If you have some
And can ping them over it would be appreciated.

It was printing with the magenta ghosting prior to
Changing the manifold by the way.
All seems rather strange. Like I say all was working great. The yellow
Ran out then got the ghosting a little. Replaced the pump
And manifold and the print quality has got worse!

[Lee Pitcher]

Managed to set the head up and hopefully that is all ok however still getting a less than perfect print from it. Some banding and not printing a solid colour as before. Hoping it might be the seals in the dampers so have ordered some more. Bi direction ok, print head test fine as is the calibration test. frustrating to say the least !

[Unknown Member]

I think Stafford Cos from NDS might be able to assist here? I know he looks after this type of machine if I’m not mistaken.

[Stafford Cox]

Can you post a picture of the test draw? It does look like the heads are out of alignment. Have you tried running BIAS adjust from service menu? It’s a mechanical adjustment for slant and front to back positions on the head.

Stafford

[Lee Pitcher]

Hi Stafford

Well it looks like still no joy on the ghosting. If anything it’s actually worse now and I thought the vertical and horizontal bias prints looked ok other tan the cyan to the right looks like theres a really big gap though ??

Strangely on the vertical line test these seem to change. One minute all look perfectly parallel and the next there can be a slight deviation

Have attached everything so hopefully you might be able to see what’s going on (currently at wits end with the bloody thing)

Cheers in advance
Lee

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[Lee Pitcher]

test print 2

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[Lee Pitcher]

test print 3

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[Lee Pitcher]

Just did another 2x vertical bias prints and the cyan gap is no longer there so completely baffled by what’s going on !

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[Kevin Flowers]

Lee
magenta & black heads are too far left show by the overlapping colours on you test print slacken screws and push slightly to the right then readjust also the best way to align the lines is to use a magnifying glass.

Kev

[Chris Wool]

agree with Kevin response extra note, test print 3 shows that the vinyl is sticking to the bed or media flange and or feed rate incorrect for that material.

with the older sc pros you will probably find the sub frame that holds the head in place has stuck to the cage with old ink and not move as it should, making adjustments impossible.. until cleaned up.

[Stafford Cox]

All good suggestions, although I can’t see the calibrations causing such a big problem in the print. They’re not THAT bad. I was expecting too see the black head wildly different to the magenta. Try giving them a tweak and see how it looks afterwards.

[Chris Wool]

yes my first thought stafford but i think the lettering is only a few mm high judging by the banding size.

could be wrong its been known

[Simon Coff]

Hi Lee,

Sorry if it’s already been suggested but possibly a clean of the encoder strip could do the trick… just an idea.

Be careful you don’t kink it, just a gentle wipe using a lint free cloth over your index finger and thumb (don’t use cleaning solution).

Simon.

[Kevin Flowers]

quote Stafford Cox:

All good suggestions, although I can’t see the calibrations causing such a big problem in the print. They’re not THAT bad. I was expecting too see the black head wildly different to the magenta. Try giving them a tweak and see how it looks afterwards.

I think the text test print was before he did the calibrations

Kev

[Lee Pitcher]

Cheers guys for all your suggestions. Genuinely much appreciated. Looks like I have another full day of tweaking and playing ahead ! Had a days break away from it yesterday so hopefully come back to it with more enthusisam today.

It seems strange that I had the print quality superb before changing the yellow manifold and nothing else was changed. That said, I thought I’d take a bit of a look at the encoder strip and it does look quite dirty so will give that a clean too. It looks like it may have a small kink in it which probably isn’t helping. Will delve into it more later and let you know the result

Once again cheers for everyones help so far

Lee

[Stafford Cox]

Those encoders can be taken off and turned upside down if you’re in trouble. Just be careful with it.

[Lee Pitcher]

OK, so cleaned and flipped the encoder strip, set and refined the vertical and horizontal bias however I think a big part of the issue was the fact the screws on the magenta head weren’t tightened and were a little loose. Couldn’t understand why one minute it would print ‘ok’ and the next horrid. That would explain it I guess.

I confess poking a screwdriver down between the heads felt a little un settling – felt almost like a bomb disposable expert just hoping not to make contact with the electronics.

Test prints look much better

One thing I still find difficult to do in the head alignment is trying to get the bars to centralise. There doesn’t appear to be a way of tweaking this other than crudely releasing the screws and physically moving the head left or right (not particularly accurate !)

Still have a slight banding but will have a go at refining some more tomorrow. Hopefully I might be able to now start earning money from the machine !

Incidently I’m using Jetbest bulk ink system and when I go to load a new media profile Versaworks says the ink isn’t compatible and won’t let me load it so I’m currently stuck with just a few generic profiles which is a pain.

Anyway, once again everyone for your wealth of experience and time

[Kevin Flowers]

Lee
once you have the head set so that it is not overlapping its sister head leave one of the back screws slightly tightened then use either the thumb screw or the allen key subject to what movement you require.

Kev

[Lee Pitcher]

Had enough of this – it’s driving me mad. Test prints all ok but when I go to reload the same file that I was printing before I get ghosting again. Still getting banding despite setting up the media rate and print quality is tolerable in mixed coloured images but in solid colours banding is prominent

Does anyone know of a service engineer near Thetford please ?

Had enough of it now – it makes no sense !

[Gary Birch]

I can recommend Julian at JDM Services who will cover your area,

http://jdm-services.co.uk/

Cheers

Gary

[Kevin Flowers]

Lee
where are you based?

Kev

[Kevin Flowers]

Lee
what ink set is the printer set for, because just re read the thread and some of the issues may be profile related if the machine is not set for CMYKlmlc ecomax this can be changed in service menu to different variations and types. Send me your location may be i’ll have a day out if you aren’t too far

Kev

[Lee Pitcher]

Hi Kev

That’s a kind offer – thanks. I’m actually in Elveden Suffolk. IP24 3TT. The ink settings weren’t on max so have just changed them to MAX 2MC. There doesn’t appear to be a setting for 6 colours? Running a Jetbest bulk ink system CMYK lm lc.

Cheers in advance
Lee

[Lee Pitcher]

Thanks Gary. Going to take a deep breath, cup of tea and go back to it calmer hopefully.

Many thanks for the info.

Lee

[Kevin Flowers]

Lee
there should be a setting for max 6 colour, what firmware is the printer on at present.
I seriously think that problems are set up and profile related

Kev

[Lee Pitcher]

Hi Kev

It’s running 7.6. It does come up Eco Max CMYKlmlc at the beginning on starting up but in the service menu doesn’t show a 6 ink option.

Lee

[Kevin Flowers]

Lee
go back in and select through 1 by 1 it will be there on that firmware i’m sure of it, you will then be able to load a decent profile. What material are you using if you go to Roland.net via VW you can access 3rd party profiles.

Kev

[Lee Pitcher]

Have re downloaded Versaworks and it seems much more stable as I was having issues there too. Definitely no option that I can see in the service menu for CMYKLmLc but it does come up as such on printer startup. Tried changing to different types of ink in the menu but this seemed to cause versaworks to crash hence re uploaded it.

Decided to bite the bullet and get an engineer to check out the other issues just to get it resolved. Difficult to blag the problems off to customers any longer as I think their patience will run out. I’m sure it’s probably just a combination of refining and profiling as it’s almost there (maybe I’m just too fussy !)

Cheers for your help all
Much appreciated

[Lee Pitcher]

Ok, just a quick update for those who might be interested. After pulling what’s left of my hair out, I decided to do a calibration of the calibration, a bit of maths and input some figures, manually cleaned the print heads, changed the media and the results were significantly better. Not 100% but reasonably close. Good enough to get by with and start earning a few pennies anyway. Will do a bit of tweaking here and there (making a specific note of current settings !) and see if it can be improved. There’s still very slight banding. Maybe an ENV. match tomorrow and re cal again might improve things more.

Cheers for all your help once again

Lee

[Kevin Flowers]

Lee
Good to hear you are at least up and running, did you get an engineer out in the end

Kev

[Lee Pitcher]

Evening Kev

No I didn’t get an engineer in the end. I did try and book one however had to cancel so had to resort to trying to resolve it myself. In unidirectional mode it prints ok but bi-directionally is rubbish ! Very wide banding even though the bi-direction set up appears bang on under the microscope. Strangely also have a bow when I cut lengths of vinyl (2.5m) banana shape even though the letters all match up. A few things to sort out but I’ll get there. Once finances recover then I will get an engineer in to tweak it properly.

Cheers

Lee

[Kevin Flowers]

Lee
what head speed are you running and what dpi

Kev

[Lee Pitcher]

Hi Kev

I have to use quite a slow head speed 350-500 and print at 1080×1080 dpi. Anything less and the quality drops quite a bit more. Cut speed 6cm p/s (not a particularly productive rate I’m aware !)

There’s definitely still an issue there I’d say and once I get some money in from invoices raised then I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet and get an engineer to sort it out properly. Annoying as I think I’m close to having it sorted !