Over the last 2 week or so we have gotten banding in our prints so bad that it just unacceptable to release to the client.
* Our enviroment temp is approx 22-23 degrees C * Printer temps are: 45/40/45 this was our settings we have always used as recommended by Seiko and Avery for their MPI media and 3M for theirs. We have toggled the temp settings +/- 5 degrees during the troubleshooting. * Have had techs out to replace the LC/C/LM/M print heads. * Adjusted the media feed about 1,019,012,091 times. * This machine is meticulously maintained and cleaned. * The technician also adjusted the voltage of the print heads which did absolutely nothing for us.
When this machine is running well, the prints look amazing, but im going to be honest with you, I have received much less then co-operative support from Seiko. We have had GEI Calgraph out numerous times and as helpful as they have tried to be to resolve the issue, it hasn't been resolved. Im starting to regret the purchase of this printer. All the material and ink wasted so far has cost me into the $10,000 range. This needs to get resolved before I pull my hair out
is that similar to post before this (magenta - right)?
if it's something like that you might have problem with air leak on head!
when we both cs (seiko) everything was perfect (except ruined head with bad light cyan ink). Perfect conditions lasted for two months. then bending problems started. print was perfect and in the middle of it banding started - head(s) started to lose nozzles. first problem was only in one head, but in time problem started to appear on other heads. by eliminating possible reasons I conclude that problem is in air leak on ink tube that is attached to head.
how did I conclude that?
when banding started - I ran nozzle check - of course: misfiring nozzles - then I made cleaning and everything was ok - started to print and after some time banding appeared again - conclusion: cleaning was helping but for hiding problem.
I unscrewed ink tube attached to head, placed misplaced "o" ring on its place, screw back that ink tube - did fill cap - after that cleaning - and problem disappeared for a long time - when problem came back I repeated this and everything was perfect again.
I realized that solution - problem could been that part of machine - ink tubes that are attached are loosen and because of that they are swinging while carriage is moving - with that motion they are making pressure on "o" ring and by that making small (but sufficient) space for air leak witch gives that misfiring effect - few nozzles missing or one part of head is missing or...
I might be wrong but every time I had problem with misfiring nozzles I did this procedure and problems vanished (for longer time)...
im very interested in the air leak theory in the ink tubes, but i myself dont feel comfortable enough to pull apart the machine unless you have a write up or pics i can see, im pretty good with all machinery and electronics.
-Nozzle checks were done probably a good 50 times during trouble shooting all showing the LC with the most severe streaks an misfiring while the C only had slight streaking.
-We also had our drive motor and the belt that drives the carriage because a few weeks ago it started grinding an squeaking terribly.
For the record our Cyan/Light Cyan have never been 100% to my liking there has always been noticable banding to a printers/designers eye but never enough that a novice or client would have any complaints about. Now its just out of hand though, i would never give these prints away let alone sell them, and at $235 per 1000mL of ink and all our vinyl its costing a fortune. There is no way that this banding is going to work itself out like it normally does after a strong clean or 2 and a capping an wiping. Seiko really needs to escalate this issue past GEI and help us out.
Well yeah...that could be the case...if it wasnt for the fact that we have an identical machine that prints with no banding...trust me its not the alignment with the material.
I don't have too many problems with our 64 but this reply had me scratching my head I may have missed some discussion earlier, but what effect would aligning the material have to do with banding? We get it occasionaly with wild swings of environmental conditions and new media opened with acclimating. Nothing we can't live with considering the final product use, but we do occasionally get the higher quality work that I hope I'm not missing out on something important.
ron, media can really cause all kinds of weired effects but mostly banding. if the media is not loaded straight then you have a number of issues. firstly, even though the 64s has a very good tracking system and the rollers are frist class in gripping the media, roll substrate will always move slightly. this returns you with uneven feed giving you a) dark & light line banding where you see dark one side and light the other, and b) normal feed adjust banding cos the media is never really treacking true.
normally this occurs either when a user is very new to the printer and doesn't really get it right, but more over it's when the feed mechanism is not 100% horizontal to the printer bed. this can be cured by adjusting the feed side via 4 screws on either side.
hope this explains a little.
ps. still not sure what's causing this banding thou
GEI came out again friday. . . replaced the Cyan & Light Cyan print heads for the 3rd time now. The tech aligned the hell out of them, they could not get any more perferectly aligned. . . Still. . . banding. Did I mention we are using OEM Seiko Inks and not 3rd party.
jpg_inc wrote: -We also had our drive motor and the belt that drives the carriage because a few weeks ago it started grinding an squeaking terribly.
well, we also had that problem, but all we did was quickly clean the belt from the inside. whenever there is squeaking/grinding sound on your carriage motor belt - just clean the darn belt :) you can do it by holding some kind of cloth (a regular cotton towel or a finger of a cotton glove - which was what i used) and slowly move the carriage manually along the machine, back and forth. your finger will get immediately dirty ;)
so maybe, it was the exchange of that motor that caused banding? check the alignment of the belts - espiecially the metal belt driving the carriage.
btw, mate, can you just make scans of your banding examples and post it somewhere? that would be helpful. a scan of your nozzle check would be a good thing too.
did gei leave you with a printer that was not acceptable? what excuse did they offer for this? how are they going to forward this to get to an acceptable and speedy resolution? i can't understand how they could just walk and leave you with all of this
This would be the 4th time someone has been out to service this machine overall, and the 3rd just for this banding issue. Seiko was supposed to escalate this past GEI to someone directly from Seiko.. .. .. but this was well over 2 weeks ago. It is pretty difficult to get a call back from them as well if you do not call them about every hour or so. I just dont understand how you can sell someone a product under a warranty then not resolve the issue within a month. I mean. . . send us a new machine or something. Its to the point where we are actually losing money from running this machine because we are wasting consumables such as ink, media, an cleaning fluids... as well as man hours. Not cool.
Joshie: Yes i probably take some high res digital pics of this issue so everyone can see my problem.
Nige, Thank you for explaining. We have been relatively trouble free except for what you just described. The dark & white banding just happed to show up last week on a new roll of material with canned profiles. We figured it was time to do a head calibration. This has happened only once before and both times, non (little) acclimation of the material was suspect. We've been at ours a little more than a year and are starting to get a bit more of the higher end work so I would like to see more control of the output and what to do when. Thanks for the tip!
