banding in latex vs UV inkjet

[FileJockey]

A Ricoh salesman was very honest with us about the issue of banding in latex wide format, suggesting that tight temperature and humidity controls in the space as well as heating controls in the printer were necessary to prevent it. I have good reason to believe him, but now I am wondering about banding issues in the UV machine (Acuity) we are looking at. Is their evidence that the problem is less or different in UV, or that environmental controls are similarly critical to output? Thanks!

 

[Correct Color]

Well, I'm pretty familiar with latex printers -- HP anyway -- and with the Acuity, and while neither of them is perfect, from my experience with both of them, banding isn't a major issue with either of them.

As far as the Ricoh salesman goes, I don't know the guy so I can't say what info he might be passing on, but that's the first I've ever heard of any of that with latex machines. I do know that they've got an onboard system that reads the back of the media to set the feed advance, and it works really, really well. So well that typically if I see banding in one of these machines, it's a nozzle out or something.

That and the fact that most people run these machines at 10 pass or more means that typical banding just isn't an issue on these machines.

On the Acuity, if you're using it as a flatbed -- which is typically how I see them used -- then the initial gantry calibration should remove any chance of banding. If they do band, then most likely something has messed up that calibration.



Mike Adams
Correct Color

 

[slush11]

I'd like to add though, that the Acuity will always have "gloss banding". (Sorry I don't know crap about latex printers lol) And also, the lamp settings and media profiles play a big part in avoiding banding on the Acuity/OCE.