Are Mimaki Eco Solvent Printers Any Good??

[gazfocus]

Just a bit of a rant really. I have two CJV150's which I bought used for printing stickers. I cannot for the life of me get a solid colour without some form of 'diffusion'. So, my question is are Mimaki Eco Solvent printers just terrible quality in general (at least the CJV150's) or is it likely that the two specific machines I've bought need some major work?

* I should say, I bought both machines off two different companies and at different times. One prints better than the other. The worse one is unusable really.

Photos attached to show how the worst of the two is printing compared to the better one.

 

[pippip]

No, mimakis are very capable machines so should be able to produce perfect solids.

Are you running both off the same rip? Or seperate rips.

 

[gazfocus]

No, mimakis are very capable machines so should be able to produce perfect solids.

Are you running both off the same rip? Or seperate rips.

Both are running off the same Rasterlink pc.

I wish I could experience the mimakis being ‘very capable’.

 

[pippip]

I'm no expert on wide format but I'd be looking at the profile being the problem, if same rip I'm assuming same profile on both machines. Have you tried a different stock and profile?

 

[SoggyWinter]

I use an Epson ecosolvent and I've seen output like that. Reducing the platen gap eliminated it. signs101.com is a more wide format focused forum than this one.

Other troubleshooting to get more saturated color:
-profile the media
-run more passes
-look for ink limits and curves in the RIP that may be impacting your job
-be sure that the media is solvent compatible. Non-solvent compatible media may run, but with reduced quality.

 

[Bly]

To eliminate profile issues run the print again without any colour correction.
As others have said, check head height and nozzle function.

 

[Hulign]

We had a CJV a while back and that thing kicked butt. We decided to go UV but I am pretty impressed with the output and durability of the 2 Mamakis we have now.

 

[Luca_R]

That type of graininess in a wide format printer is usually an alignment issue or due to improper head gap. I don't have a Mimaki but on some of our machines we can adjust head height and when the gap from the bottom of the head plate to the top of the substrate gets too big we see that type of graininess.

Run a head alignment and see if there's a setting to adjust for paper thickness.

 

[ZoogeeWorld]

As many have mentioned here, it could be an alignment or head height thing, you should make sure all that is good. How are the nozzle test prints looking, all nozzles firing? If all that is good, you can play around with profiles, speeds / uni-dir and Bi-dir printing, heat and so forth. You might also want to make sure the vinyl you're printing on is Eco-Solvent compatible.