Acuity Advance banding issues

[Chubb]

Hello everyone!

We have had our FujiFilm Acuity Advanced for over a year and have tried numerous times to reduce banding in our prints.

I have read some other posts saying to try unidirectional printing and it does reduce the banding but not much. The downside is that it takes longer to print and it doesn't get rid of the banding.

Is this just something we will have to live with or can the issue be cured? I have attached an image if our banding issue. Any advice would be appreciated!

 

[Drexus]

Hello everyone!

We have had our FujiFilm Acuity Advanced for over a year and have tried numerous times to reduce banding in our prints.

I have read some other posts saying to try unidirectional printing and it does reduce the banding but not much. The downside is that it takes longer to print and it doesn't get rid of the banding.

Is this just something we will have to live with or can the issue be cured? I have attached an image if our banding issue. Any advice would be appreciated!

When attempting to resolve an issue such as this, first secure your primary references for printer function. This means: calibrate media thickness, then perform a nozzle check. If you find you have to adjust the thickness setting, then you know your dots were not landing in the right place. If you find you had a slight clog in one nozzle, then you will defiantly have disruption in the image.

If neither of these resolve the issue, then I would refer to an old method we used back in the PSL2 days: add 1% noise to any image that has a gradient or vignette.

It's hard to speculate the real issue if we don't know how the image is failing.

#1 Rule: Factory settings can never be trusted. "It was fine before" is not a step in the correction flow-chart.

These basic mechanical calibration procedures are prerequisite to colour correction. How can you maintain confidence in your colour if you don't know the dots are landing in the right spot?

 

[Jason]

I'll give my two cents.

I looked at the Fuji/Oce Acuity a while back while shopping for a UV Flatbed. I did not like it because of the banding. They had a setting where the UV intensity was increased in order to "burn" out the banding. The thought was if you increased the UV, you could "melt" away the overlap caused by the bidirectional passes overlapping each other.

When you go to a trade show, all anybody wants to print is a big field of flowers. I've been doing this a long time and I have never seen any jobs like that. I created a sample file of large solids for each vendor to print on their machines. It quickly separated the machines that banded versus the ones that did not. They all band, it's just what they do to minimize it.

I was able to find a machine that was cheaper and printed better than the Fuji/Oce Acuity, with no banding.

I don't know if you will ever be able to remove the banding. You may be able to adjust the x/y axis of the print arm so that the overlap of the two bidirectional passes is at a minimum. Whether you have that much control, I don't know. Good Luck.

 

[Chubb]

I'll give my two cents.

I looked at the Fuji/Oce Acuity a while back while shopping for a UV Flatbed. I did not like it because of the banding. They had a setting where the UV intensity was increased in order to "burn" out the banding. The thought was if you increased the UV, you could "melt" away the overlap caused by the bidirectional passes overlapping each other.

When you go to a trade show, all anybody wants to print is a big field of flowers. I've been doing this a long time and I have never seen any jobs like that. I created a sample file of large solids for each vendor to print on their machines. It quickly separated the machines that banded versus the ones that did not. They all band, it's just what they do to minimize it.

I was able to find a machine that was cheaper and printed better than the Fuji/Oce Acuity, with no banding.

I don't know if you will ever be able to remove the banding. You may be able to adjust the x/y axis of the print arm so that the overlap of the two bidirectional passes is at a minimum. Whether you have that much control, I don't know. Good Luck.

Unfortunately we have no way to adjust the settings unless we had the "key" that the service guys have.

The banding seems to be exactly where the different paths of ink touch each other. I have found that if the substrate is laminated the banding virtually disappears.

 

[frankiekoh]

First of all are using roll to roll printing or table printing ?

what quality print mode are using production mode ? quality mode ? fine art mode ?

is roll to roll different material had different behaviour. First of all you need to cleanup the roller with spirit make sure clean for gripping and the tensioning bar at roll to roll must be clean from dirt, is the material does not move smoothly the banding can be created. some material like synhetic paper had this banding problem due to back is smooth not providing good feeding during printing. rought back surface had good printout. Try it out maybe it would help.

do you facing any problems on the printhead nozzle cloging or failure ?

 

[Chubb]

Unfortunately, it turns out that the problem was with the flatbed. The frame of the machine was twisted during shipping and they are coming in this week to try and get it straightened out.

Thanks for the reply!

 

[njwaverider]

no more banding on rigid pvc substrates (ie.sintra, palight)

no more banding on rigid pvc substrates (ie.sintra, palight)

we have an oce 350xt, same machine as fuji's acuity advance. fuji brands the oce machine.

we print primarily on extruded foam pvc (sintra, palight, etc.). we took delivery on our machine in late february. after months of banding issues we have eliminated the banding by the following settings:

(note we prefer quality matte setting to match finish of the rigid sheet goods)

quality matte, bidirectional, lamps- leading 2 trailing 4, with a 2 second end of swath delay.

with these settings it is sometimes impossible to determine the travel of the printhead.

if the image is busy the 2 second end of swath delay can be eliminated.

 

[Chubb]

njwaverider thanks for the information! We were finally able to get a sellable product on one half of the table, the other half is so far out-of-wack fujifilm isn't sure what to do about it.

Eventually they will have replaced about every part on the acuity lol.

Thanks again everyone.

Chris