Banding?

[FrznFire07 217]

To any of the people on here who print wraps and/or large decals:

when you do large scale gradients does everybody else get banding? 

We have a wrap we are doing now, that has a back ground image of green fading to white,  and we have some banding in the print.

 

its minor, but because it's a wrap you can see it if you're in the right light.

 

we have installed wraps that other companies have printed and there's had banding as well, all be it minor,

I'm just curious if this is typical of a large format printer or if there is something we can do to minimize it.

 

We are using a Mutoh ValueJet 1324 with Genuine Mutoh Inks

On 3M IJ180 v3 (controltac)

with matching 3M gloss laminate.

[Dakotagrafx 7,297]

Post a nozzle check, that is usually where you find that answer

[FrznFire07 217]

nozzle check is totally good, i will send a picture, but nozzles are good

[mark-s 1,126]

Clean heads, if that doesn`t work might need new heads.

 

mark-s 

[Dakotagrafx 7,297]

Only if nozzle check is perfect (not "good") then check head alignment. I have seen too many people say they have good heads that have deflection in reality

[FrznFire07 217]

ok here's my nozzle check, and a picture of the banding, its more evident in the lighter parts of the gradient. And I ONLY get banding when printing gradients.

 ---

also just cleaned Heads, wipers and encoder strip.

[Dakotagrafx 7,297]

hard to see the yellow- is that printing ok?  what type of printer

[FrznFire07 217]

yeah yellow is printing good,

Mutoh Valuejet 1324

[Dakotagrafx 7,297]

i'm out of ideas

[mb20music 760]

Hmmm, I see a break in the print test, is that the Magenta? I know if I get even one little break like that with my inkjet printer it will make my prints come out bad, it usually just takes one more head cleaning,..

 

 

 

 

[FrznFire07 217]

mb20music,

yea i noticed that too and have since cleaned the head again, usually for us one or two breaks in the nozzle check is hardly noticeable.

[FrznFire07 217]

So to add to my list of problems with this wrap, now we are having color matching issues.  we had to reprint a couple of the panels and the color's don't match.

 

color by numbers is all exactly the same - RIP settings are the same, all Profiles are the same.

[Dakotagrafx 7,297]

So to add to my list of problems with this wrap, now we are having color matching issues.  we had to reprint a couple of the panels and the color's don't match.

 

color by numbers is all exactly the same - RIP settings are the same, all Profiles are the same.

I had that before when I had to reload the computer - never before but after reloading the os and rip it was different from the stuff I printed before.    printers are so much fun

did you get the banding figured out so the next person knows what to look for?

[FrznFire07 217]

sort of, first problem we believe came from converting panels to jpg.

 

since we use flexi RIP it doesn't really work well with Illustrators effects and things, so typically i will jpeg my files before we rip them.

we noticed after the fact the photoshop created some of the banding in the gradient when i jpeged files.

 

so from now on we will print wraps mostly from illustrator files, but i'm still not sure what we will do when we have lots of effects in illustrator since we have to rasterize the files.

at the very least we'll be using tiff now not jpg

 

also in talking with other wrap companies we found that large scale gradients typically will have some amount of banding no matter what you do.

[Dakotagrafx 7,297]

back when I started I used flexi 7.6 RIP and hated life- never did get what I called grt prints from it - switched to versaworks and life was better.   doesn't mutoh have their own rip?

[FrznFire07 217]

no unfortunately mutoh pairs with flexi now, honestly its not horrible but i can see where versaworks would be better.

[FrznFire07 217]

so we believe we found the problem.  We need a new maintenance station.