VS540 – Bit of a rant

[NeilFox]

OK, I have removed the labels on the front perspex cover and still no joy, in fact I started stepping forward even more and part way across the print managed to pick up some black writing and identified that as a crop mark and went away looking for the rear crop marks. Weird!!!

ADDED
OK, I have now had 27 (yes two seven) attempts at this one job. The print is only 48" x 6", how difficult can this be. I am going to stop trying now before I throw the machine out the door.

IF THERE IS ANYONE FROM ROLAND THAT MONITORS THIS FORUM, PLEASE ADD YOUR COMMENTS.

Neil

[Kevin Flowers]

Niel
couple of things, how many rollers are you using. Normally the reason for it stepping forward is that it is seeing the print as twisted. This can be caused by some laminate. I would try printing with crop marks, remove but don’t laminate then re install & see what happens. Also may be try a matt vinyl

Kev

[NeilFox]

I have tried with 2 end pinch rollers, and all 7, same problem. This problem occurs with Sihl and Metamark (MD3 & MD5).

This problem happens more under artificial light.

[Roy Roberts]

Hi Neil,
Have a mate up the road who bought a new vs300 a couple of months ago and has the same problem. Hes had Roland out had boards changed etc, to no avail. I will speak to him and see what is happening as the last input from Roland on Wed was they were sending video of the problem to the manufacturer.

Regards

Roy

[NeilFox]

Roy, Thanks for that. I would appreciate what your mate has to say.

I have tried it again this morning with the media clamps in again to no avail.

I have been told that Roland in Japan are aware of the problem and I recently had a redesigned crop mark controller board (so I was told) because this seems to be a problem across the board with the VS range.

I managed to get a print & cut yesterday morning fine. The one I did later in the day was out on the cut line but acceptable. Then yesterday evening, it stopped working and has got progressively worse in the now it basically advances the material 1 step ever 1/2 inch movement of the cutting head.

Kevin,

Thanks for the suggestion I will try the print / remove / cut. However my client wants these stickers with a gloss laminate. If a machine is unable to do a print and cut using matt / gloss laminates, I think it will come under the heading of ‘not merchantable quality’. If that is the case, Roland needs to withdraw the machine from sale because at present it does not do what it is advertised to do.

[Jason Bagladi]

I know on the old SP models, there was a potentiometer on the cutting head which needs to be set up (values displayed on the main lcd panel via Service Mode Menu).

I had similar problems, but this cured 99% of them.

[NeilFox]

Jason,

The Roland engineers, one form the UK and one from Ireland set up the boards. There is a little screw device that is used in conjunction with a display on the lcd panel to set up that sensitivity of the crop mark eye. The engineers did this when the boards were installed.

It seems funny, but the crop marks are detected fine after the service engineers visit but as time does on, the problem becomes more acute to the point like now, the machine cannot find the crop mark setup at all.

[Roy Roberts]

Hi Neil,
to save passing messages on he is going to contact you direct.

Regards

Roy

[NeilFox]

Roy,

Thanks for that.

[NeilFox]

Kev,

I I have just tried it without laminate. Print / remove / cut. Failed first in the same way as before. I held the print, Lifted the pinch rollers, acknowledged the crop mark fail message and then put the pinch rollers down. I then used the up arrows to line it up. So basically the print was in the same position as before. Sent the job again and worked this time. I don’t know what difference there was, one failed, the other worked.

Neil

[Chris Wool]

Neil i feel for you it is very annoying for you.
kevin is on the right track to check if its the machine or the laminating causing the problem.
every now and again i have this problem and can only be put down to laminating technique so when it does i but the material in about 3 mm twisted one way or the other and normally cures it for that job only.

quote :

Thanks for the suggestion I will try the print / remove / cut. However my client wants these stickers with a gloss laminate. If a machine is unable to do a print and cut using matt / gloss laminates, I think it will come under the heading of ‘not merchantable quality’. If that is the case, Roland needs to withdraw the machine from sale because at present it does not do what it is advertised to do.

to add salt to the wound my VS540 is working flawlessly at cutting after laminating. gloss and matt.
so keep at them it should be sorted.

chris

[NeilFox]

Chris, thanks.

Roland have pulled their office out of here, today is their last day in Ireland. The engineer that they had over here will be working for one of their partners from Monday. He is taking everything, including the internal errors (every so often) that pop up during the search for crop marks etc and handing it all on to Roland UK.

I assume he will still do the work, but Roland need to sort this. I have been told by a couple of engineers that this appears to be an issue with many VS machines. I wanted to see if any other users have this issue and if so, maybe we can collectively put pressure on Roland to do something about it. My machine is almost a year old and has had this problem for the past 9 months that I know of. In my view that is too long for a machine that is the production workhorse of mine and other sign shops.

Neil

[Jason Bagladi]

quote NeilFox:

Jason,

The Roland engineers, one form the UK and one from Ireland set up the boards. There is a little screw device that is used in conjunction with a display on the lcd panel to set up that sensitivity of the crop mark eye. The engineers did this when the boards were installed.

It seems funny, but the crop marks are detected fine after the service engineers visit but as time does on, the problem becomes more acute to the point like now, the machine cannot find the crop mark setup at all.

Surely this point towards the problem. If it works fine when first set correctly, then I would focus my time to this area.

[NeilFox]

Jason,

How do you mean? I have put lines at the end of the print using a ruler across its width to make sure the crop marks are correctly lined up. (see photo) A trick the engineer taught me.

Using this method, the print cannot be miss aligned.

Neil

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[Steve McAdie]

I see from the picture that you laminate over the crop marks. This can cause reading problems in my experience, i cover crop marks with a small piece of application tape before laminating then trim around it with scalpel and remove, cropmarks are now clearer and easier for machine to pick up. I also have found light can affect the detection and sometimes it is as simple as opening the curtains or turning on the light.

Steve

[NeilFox]

Steve,
I have done that in the past when doing reverse print on clear and I can see the benefits.

Part of the issue is that its worked, then got progressively worse. My old SP540V worked all the time. The new machine, which I would have expected to progress in 6 years seem to have taken a retrograde step in relation to crop mark detection.

[John Hughes]

Try taking a new cleaning swab and running it between the vinyl and optical eye – there might be some dust which is not helping.

John

[NeilFox]

John,
Thanks for the suggestion, I tried to clean the optical eye again today to no avail The problem seems to be getting worse as time goes on. This is the same as before, the crop mark registration becomes worse as time goes on.

I have spoken directly to an engineer who is coming out tomorrow, for which I am grateful.

I spoke to the Roland Support desk in the UK and was told that someone from there would get back to me about it. They did not. It took me to call and engineer direct.

I am wonder how extensive this problem is. I have spoken to a couple of people today are very dissatisfied because of this continuing problem. My issue dates back to March this year, still unresolved.

I am wondering if this machine is in fact of "merchantable quality" because it does not live up to the description in the advertising literature.

I will update the thread tomorrow after the engineer has been here.

By the way, the following is the text I have put on the Roland Forum. We shall see if they remove the thread.

ON ROLAND FORUM
I was told by the lady on the Roland Support Desk to use the Roland Form and see if anyone has any suggestions on helping me fix this problem, so here I am.

I have a VS540 that will not detect crop marks properly. It works for a while and then start for fail more and more until it fails to detect the crop marks ALL THE TIME.

This problem has been evident since March 2011, even before but I did not contact the support desk until about that time.

I print registration marks on a job, then take it out, laminate it and put it back in the machine. It detects the circle and rectangle then as it starts to go across t find the crop mark on the other side, it starts to advance the material forwards. so that the sensor misses the circle by about 1 1/2 inches. The material is in correctly because I put a ruler over the middle of the crop marks and pit a detects line at each edge on the material so that I can precisely line it up. I know the material is in perfectly. After many attempts at finding the crop marks, the sensor just passes over the makes without stopping or registering them at all. Then the next stage is that it finds the dot and goes to find the rectangle and then on finding the edge of the rectangle it immediately comes up ‘Cropmark Error’ ‘Not Found’. Last Thursday I tried 27 times to find the crop marks with a 100% failure rate. I have printed other jobs Friday and today, still 100% failure rate. It has not detected a crop mark at all since last Thursday. I have wasted meters & meters of material. As a small company I cannot afford to waste material. Although this machine is great re print speed and quality, it is breaking my heart because it cannot be used for Print / Laminate and Cut which is the work flow that forms part of the advertising.

Can someone please please please help me because this machine is ruining my business.

Neil Fox

[Mark Nihotte]

I had a similar problem on my SP540V a while ago . The problem ended up being a failing data cable. Cable replaced and problem solved…along with a couple of other minor niggles which we (the techos and I) thought were more to do with the scan strip or reader (nearly stuffed the strip taking it in and out…cleaning and turning…temperamental machines when they start to age!!!)

[NeilFox]

Mark,

Thanks for the suggestion.

I wanted to let everyone know that the engineer spend 4+ hours here today and it seems that the machine is identifying the crop marks and cutting correctly.

I tried the suggestion made by someone either in conversation of from the board to apply matt laminate over the crop marks. (thanks for the comment) This worked, the crop marks were found and the job cut correctly. I then repeated the exercise and again the job was cut correctly.

I left the final job as when printed and waited for the engineer to arrive and we tried to cut the job. It kept failing.

The engineer, then replaced the crop mark sensor and calibrated it. It still would not work. He then put a filter from an SP540V machine with some on the bench mods below the sensor. This helped matters.

The sensor was then calibrated (all this process took about 4 hours) and the machine is now working. I have been in this situation before but I am hoping that this could resolve the issue. All this leads me to the conclusion that this is light (reflection) related.

I have also had a call from the Service Manager in the UK to see how things are going. I appreciated the call, thanks Andrew.

We will now watch to see if the problem is rectified, which I hope. I will update the thread with any news as it happens.

Neil

[Shane Drew]

I had a similar problem with one of my two VS640’s.

It was all to do with the high gloss laminate I was using, and the reader couldn’t see the marks at all. It worked fine with lustre or matt laminate, but screwed up with the gloss. Only one machine though. The tech turned down the voltage and Ive not had a problem since. The gloss was reflecting so much light, the reader was overly sensitive and wouldn’t read correctly. I had to do the signs by manual means until they worked it out. Been going fine ever since.

[NeilFox]

Shane, thanks for the input. It seems that optic is overly sensitive. Glad to hear everything is OK now.