Versacamm ‘dropout banding’ advice needed please?

[Gavin MacMillan]

I’ve just printed 3 3x1m banners this morning on 720×360 standard option through signlab print and cut. These had solid black background and printed completely fine. The only time I’ve had anything like what you describe is on photos with a dull or cloudy sky, this seems to be something the versacamm struggles with. Can you post pics? I’m not the most experienced with this machine, but sounds like roland are talking crap to me. Printed loads of signs yesterday for the same job (same black b.g.) and everything was peachy. In fact the solidness (is that a word) of the background is something I’ve been the most impressed with on the versacamm.

G

[Chris Wool]

hi
no it should not do this.
it sounds as if its running low on ink within the head & dampers when high use.
temp cure slow down the head speed tell the machine to do full scan printing perhaps only print in un-directional.

what rip are you using

chris

[Paul Hodges]

quote Chris Wool:

hi
no it should not do this.
it sounds as if its running low on ink within the head & dampers when high use.
temp cure slow down the head speed tell the machine to do full scan printing perhaps only print in un-directional.

what rip are you using

chris

Hi Chris
The rip is versaworks.
I assume you don’t get this problem on your machine then? Using max inks by the way

Paul

[Paul Hodges]

quote Gavin MacMillan:

I’ve just printed 3 3x1m banners this morning on 720×360 standard option through signlab print and cut. These had solid black background and printed completely fine. The only time I’ve had anything like what you describe is on photos with a dull or cloudy sky, this seems to be something the versacamm struggles with. Can you post pics? I’m not the most experienced with this machine, but sounds like roland are talking crap to me. Printed loads of signs yesterday for the same job (same black b.g.) and everything was peachy. In fact the solidness (is that a word) of the background is something I’ve been the most impressed with on the versacamm.

G

Cheers Gavin

I agree, the print quality is great on the machine generally, except of course when my lovely feint stripes appear!

[Gert du Preez]

I have never encountered this problem on our VersaCamm either. Didnt you post a thread on this a few months ago? Is the problem intermittent or does it happen everytime you print a large solid? Does it happen at lower speed / higher quality? Does ink saturation play a role? Is it only certain colours (If it does it on Y and not M, for example, it could indicate a possible problem with heads, ink lines etc.) If it was an inherent VersaCamm problem, I think more users would have noticed it by now!

Must add I use a SP300. What happens middle of print for you could be off the vinyl for me! So, smaller just may be better……?

[Gavin MacMillan]

I’ve got a big ‘un and had no complaints so far 😀

[Gert du Preez]

Gavin

30 inch strokes twice as often beats an occasional 54 inch stroke…..

[Paul Hodges]

quote GERT DU PREEZ:

I have never encountered this problem on our VersaCamm either. Didnt you post a thread on this a few months ago? Is the problem intermittent or does it happen everytime you print a large solid? Does it happen at lower speed / higher quality? Does ink saturation play a role? Is it only certain colours (If it does it on Y and not M, for example, it could indicate a possible problem with heads, ink lines etc.) If it was an inherent VersaCamm problem, I think more users would have noticed it by now!

Must add I use a SP300. What happens middle of print for you could be off the vinyl for me! So, smaller just may be better……?

yep, i’ve posted several times about it, thinking it might be caused by other things but i’ve exhausted all the variables now so i know it is definately the printer, just don’t know why. The thing is, i shouldn’t have to try messing with long shot ideas to make it work properly, surely it should work properly on it’s own?

There is no one thing you can do to replicate the fault, speed settings, quality settings…none of that gets rid of it so it’s pot luck if it shows up in the middle of a print. I’ve seen it in lots of the prints, just that sometimes it’s more obvious than others, depending on the colour. I think it’s doing it all the time, just not always been noticeable.

It’s at its worst on large flood coat cyan/magenta colour prints. Roland don’t seem keen to change the heads either.
I think i may try to take this further because obviously you guys are not getting this problem

[Gavin MacMillan]

what can i say? 😀

Paul: Definitely take it further, is it still under warranty? If so get an engineer round, lock the door and don’t let him out till you can run of metres of solid magenta with no variations!

G

[Paul Hodges]

quote Gavin MacMillan:

what can i say? 😀

Paul: Definitely take it further, is it still under warranty? If so get an engineer round, lock the door and don’t let him out till you can run of metres of solid magenta with no variations!

G

no mate, it’s not under warranty and it has no maintenance cover but i don’t care about that, this fault occured from day one and has never gone so they are obliged to fix it as far as i’m concerned. I’ve been sending in test prints and talking to them for absolutely ages about it they just don’t know what’s causing it.

I want to be able to post here and tell everyone how good rolands service is because they have either cured this or swapped the printer and it’s probably in their interest also that that is the conclusion.

[Kevin Flowers]

Paul
by the sounds of it your encoder strip is dirty, never done one on a versacam, but if its like the Soljet remove the top cover. You will find a thin transparent plastic strip use a soft clean cloth & lightly wipe it. You should find you end up with a black dust on the cloth. This is ink dust & it interrupts the signal that the head uses to know where it is. On Rolands it seems to cause a mis-print & mutohs it makes the heads fire different colors hope this helps. As always only do the above if you are confident to do it

Kev

[Gavin MacMillan]

Sounds like you have been on the ball from the start!
Fingers crossed you get it sorted!

Is this encoder strip problem common? Seem to think I read about it the other day, always good to have these things in mind when problems crop up

[Kevin Flowers]

Gavin
it can be a problem, but one that is easily sorted it just gets print dust on so cannot read head position correctly takes a tech about 5 min to sort. Sounds like Pauls problem is probably something else

Kev

[Kevin Flowers]

Paul
did read somewhere of someone else who had a similar problem had Roland out time after time. He eventually managed to speak with the man who put the service manual together, he instantly said that it was a wire tension problem. Roland adjusted the tension & the problem was cured. Can’t find the article now don’t even know if the Versacamm runs on a wire. Just a thought

Kev

[Chris Wool]

i have seen this slight lightning of the ink on my sc540 once or twice over 4 years but not had to do anything just put it down to hard use at the time.

i did hear that roland did have a problem on there larger machine simular to this but only under very heavy use dont know what cured this.

kevs idea sounds very posible a lot of care required with this strip.

my machine was swaped out when it was 5 weeks old for a cutting problem that could not be cured on the third visit.

will keep thinking

chris

[rick eade]

Hi Paul, I bought a versacam sp540 just over 6 months ago and am having the same problem. I flew the tech guy up from Perth to do its 6 monthly service as part of the warranty and he couldnt solve the problem either. I have had some expensive prints go into the bin and reverted to using my old vinyl cutter on more than one occasion. Hopefully we can solve this problem soon.

[Shane Drew]

this is an interesting topic. I have something similar, but only if I print on a particular brand of vinyl. A faint band of colour shift.

your problem sounds like a print head not firing properly though. If it is the head, it should be more noticeable on a 360×730 print resolution, but less noticeable on say, a 720×720 print resolution. Is that the case?

Roland are not very keen on changing heads under warranty tho. I’d had a problem with my black head from day 1. Complained about it for ages. When I upgraded to full solvent, Roland refused the claim. The ink distributor changed it FOC and everything has been sweet until recently when the head looks like it needs to be replaced (after 2 years)

I’d be interested to know how this is resolved.

[Paul Hodges]

quote Kevin Flowers:

Paul
by the sounds of it your encoder strip is dirty, never done one on a versacam, but if its like the Soljet remove the top cover. You will find a thin transparent plastic strip use a soft clean cloth & lightly wipe it. You should find you end up with a black dust on the cloth. This is ink dust & it interrupts the signal that the head uses to know where it is. On Rolands it seems to cause a mis-print & mutohs it makes the heads fire different colors hope this helps. As always only do the above if you are confident to do it

Kev

cheers Kev,

I’ll check this encoder strip and see if we get any joy.
The problem happened on the very first print I did so I can’t see the encoder strip would have had time to get sufficiently dirty?

But I’ll check this any way. At this point, everything is worth checking!

[Paul Hodges]

quote Chris Wool:

i have seen this slight lightning of the ink on my sc540 once or twice over 4 years but not had to do anything just put it down to hard use at the time.

i did hear that roland did have a problem on there larger machine simular to this but only under very heavy use dont know what cured this.

kevs idea sounds very posible a lot of care required with this strip.

my machine was swaped out when it was 5 weeks old for a cutting problem that could not be cured on the third visit.

will keep thinking

chris

Cheers Chris, anything you can come up with is greatly appreciated.

Our machine is used often but I wouldn’t say it gets heavy use, certainly nowhere near trade machines and such like

[Paul Hodges]

quote rick eade:

Hi Paul, I bought a versacam sp540 just over 6 months ago and am having the same problem. I flew the tech guy up from Perth to do its 6 monthly service as part of the warranty and he couldnt solve the problem either. I have had some expensive prints go into the bin and reverted to using my old vinyl cutter on more than one occasion. Hopefully we can solve this problem soon.

That’s interesting because you are the first person I have heard of with the same problem. It sounds like we are in a fairly exclusive club though!

Certainly this problem is not ‘across the board with all printers’ as has been put to me

[Paul Hodges]

quote Shane Drew:

this is an interesting topic. I have something similar, but only if I print on a particular brand of vinyl. A faint band of colour shift.

your problem sounds like a print head not firing properly though. If it is the head, it should be more noticeable on a 360×730 print resolution, but less noticeable on say, a 720×720 print resolution. Is that the case?

Roland are not very keen on changing heads under warranty tho. I’d had a problem with my black head from day 1. Complained about it for ages. When I upgraded to full solvent, Roland refused the claim. The ink distributor changed it FOC and everything has been sweet until recently when the head looks like it needs to be replaced (after 2 years)

I’d be interested to know how this is resolved.

Hello Shane,

The problem certainly shows up whatever print resolution you use, I guess you could say it’s more obvious in 360 than hi-quality.

They definately are not keen to replace any heads though

[Elena kalispera]

Was this problem ever sorted it sounds similar to mine??
ELENA X

[Paul Hodges]

quote Elena kalispera:

Was this problem ever sorted it sounds similar to mine??
ELENA X

nope, it’s a problem for the versacamm. some engineers i have spoken to say it affects a lot of printers.

this particular problem is not media related, it seems to be something to do with either static, which temporarily throws the dot pattern out or it’s a feed problem with the motors whereby it doesn’t move the media properly and consistently.

i ask this question to every engineer i meet and so far although they know of the problem they don’t know the absolute answer.

another thing i do know for sure is that this problem also occurs on the VP models and later, not just the 540 v

[Robert Walker]

i have a similar problem with my 4 month old vs640 where a line appears out of sync
its not all the time but i have no confidence in it,

Roland have been out a few times with no results the did mention that the next step was to replace the print head but that was 2 engineer visits ago!

---

Attachments:

[Chris Wool]

quote Robert T Walker:

i have a similar problem with my 4 month old vs640 where a line appears out of sync
its not all the time but i have no confidence in it,

Roland have been out a few times with no results the did mention that the next step was to replace the print head but that was 2 engineer visits ago!

robert you must keep on to them as its not acceptable keep records of every time it does it and costs of what its ruined.
my experience of big problems with a new roland printer was very favorable.
after 3 visits it MUST be fixed

[Paul Hodges]

quote Robert T Walker:

i have a similar problem with my 4 month old vs640 where a line appears out of sync
its not all the time but i have no confidence in it,

Roland have been out a few times with no results the did mention that the next step was to replace the print head but that was 2 engineer visits ago!

I had the print heads changed as a result of my drop out problem at Rolands cost, the upside was that we got new heads, the downside was that of course it didn’t cure it because it’s nothing to do with the heads directly. When it gets to that point you know they are desperate because they don’t know how to cure it.

Obviously if you’re getting the problem all the time it could be something else other than what we know as drop out banding

[Gareth Howells]

hi, i had this issue with my 2 month old sp540, it turned out it was only when printing magenta. my supplier came and replaced a damper and it has been great since.

[Stephen Morriss]

Roberts problem isn’t a print head as it’s obviously still printing, just miss aligned. could be the print server not keeping up, Rip problem or the printer getting out of sync for one step.

Is the out of step area print interleaved, as in does the print head print it gradually, or is it done in one sweep?

Steve

[Simon Worrall]

I have had this problem from time to time, but always when printing banner material. I finally realised that the material was moving about. Very slight, but enough to show up as unpredictable light bands.
Now whenever I print banners I do it without the media clamps on the side, as they cause the material to bunch up slightly at the edges. And use all the pinch rollers.

[Andrew Blackett]

We get the pale horizontal stripes too – have never managed to rid them permanently, some colours just seem worse than others – particularly so when we’re printing a big background of a particular colour, usually cyans.

I’d wondered about upgrading the dampers to higher capacity ones like the ones from digiprint supplies http://www.digiprint-supplies.com/Roland—Mimaki—Mutoh-DX4-Small-Damper-p11682.html They are meant to prevent "ink starvation" although I have to say I wouldnt have a clue how to fit them or even if it would improve the problem.

Also get strange lines going at 90 degrees to the head, I think this is down to too much vacuum suction pulling the media "into" the holes on the platen.

Andy

[DavidUrry]

Have you checked to see if air getting into the tubes at the joints?
I had a similar problem changed filters and dampers. I would do a test print and that would be fine, so I start printing and the problem would still be their. took the covers of and there I saw air bubbles in the pipes.

[Phil Green]

Do you find the head stops moving across and where it stops for a little while thats where you get the banding???[/i]