Streaky lines on print

[Warren Beard]

is it a Roland Sp540i ?

[BenRead]

Hi mate,

yes it is.

[Warren Beard]

how did I know that ?

I have the same printer and it is a design flaw with the printer (so the supplier told me) Ink runs out in the reservoir and it doesn’t fill it up quick enough to avoid the light bands (too little ink going down as it’s almost run out)

you hear it when the pump goes, watch the spot as it comes out where it was while pumping and you will see the line. It depends on the colour you are printing at the time too, I just printed off 5 roll ups and 1 out of the 5 had the problem.

The closest I have got to avoiding it is to run in uni-directional, this slows the rate at which it prints allowing more time to replenish the reservoir in time before it runs too low.

I have wasted easily 20m of print (and it’s always with solid colours so a lot of ink too) just because of this problem which really should be unacceptable for a printer of this price.

oh, another tip, if you are printing something that only has sections of solid print or full solid print, pause the printer every few minutes or so, when you pause it the pump will start if it is running low in the reservoir, this will prevent the problem but you need to almost stand by the machine while it prints so a little unpractical.

cheers

Warren

[Dan Osterbery]

i get it occasionally with the sp-540v as well! pretty much as you describe warren!

[Chris Wool]

quote :

I have the same printer and it is a design flaw with the printer (so the supplier told me)

can’t believe that warren speak to bret at roland. that is not acceptable.
i have had roll up material with a flaw causing similar changed makes and all well

my guess is static does it line up with the spare pinch rollers or encoder strip.
if its running low on ink in the head i would expect it to fade out more before failure.

[Warren Beard]

quote Chris Wool:

quote :

I have the same printer and it is a design flaw with the printer (so the supplier told me)

can’t believe that warren speak to bret at roland. that is not acceptable.
i have had roll up material with a flaw causing similar changed makes and all well

my guess is static does it line up with the spare pinch rollers or encoder strip.
if its running low on ink in the head i would expect it to fade out more before failure.

Hi Chris

We discussed all this on this old thread of mine

http://www.uksignboards.com/viewtopic.p … ight=lines

I have tried many things and spoken to Roland, Roland gave me many ideas to try (one being printing in uni-direction) and that was the only one that helped. I unroll the media as well, tried with and without take up.

There is no denying that the banding appears in the exact spot where the media was when the pump comes on – fact every time.

I can’t actually remember if it was the supplier or Roland that told me it was a design flaw but one of them did and I believe it is, they need to supply free upgrade to the pumps or something 🙄