purchasing a printer from ebay need some advice pls Sp300i

[Ravisteam]

HI guys, I have done few prints and some print cuts ..I am not happy with the print quality ..I have printed small logo sticker for a friend .It has a white background ,Problem is white area is not white ..Its showing some ink dots , like a magenta spray ..Logo has small letters and they are not Sharpe ..Materiel I used was GrafitiPs White Glossy sticker materiel.I dont know if I am doing something wrong here or this is a problem with the printer . I have printed another test print and attached it here .You can see on that there is a little ink spray around letters and also you can see the colour chart also has some small ink spray .....
I have done a manual clean and test print got worse ,then I did few normal head cleans , and 2 medium cleans..and test print got back to how it was (But just a one black nozzle missing tho ) ..I never done a Power Clean yet ....So guy what you recommend me ??......
Does the Manual clean do any good ??....Should I do a Power Clean ??.....Is this ink spray issue is due to wrong media setting ??.(I didnt get a profile for the media just used a WV glossy gum paper) ..Please advice me ...Thanks

[wayupnorth]

Your original post suggested that the seller described this printer as perfect but it clearly has issues. At this point I would be thinking about sending it back for a refund. I had a similar issue with a 3100 a couple of years ago, eventually returned it with eBay's help but convinced the seller knew there was an problem. Not saying that is the case here but your "bargain" may not be that good. That head check print looks terrible !.

[Ravisteam]

Hi wayupnorth thanks for the input .But I dont think this is a huge problem even tho i have to replace heads I think its still a good bargain ..

Anyway I just checked the Materiel I used ...It says 30-S012-25 Monomeric Waterbased Gloss white ...!!! ...When I am ordering this I told the guy i have a Sp300 i so please recommend me a good sticker paper ..So he said this a popular one ..But now I am having doubts this paper might not be a one for solvent ink !! ..Any suggestions ??

[anniecov]

My suggestion is don't buy used printers off eBay. I bought them off eBay myself in the beginning (15 years ago) and it was a very bad move. It will cost you much more than a new printer (with free tech support) in the long run.

[mags1892]

Thats nozzle deflections cleaning the printhead should sort this ok .

[mags1892]

My suggestion is don't buy used printers off eBay. I bought them off eBay myself in the beginning (15 years ago) and it was a very bad move. It will cost you much more than a new printer (with free tech support) in the long run.

youll only get free support with OEM inks, plenty of second hand dealers will give free support if you buy inks of them .

[Ravisteam]

Thanks Mags1892..I got some advice to do bi directional adjustments and calibration. .I'll try them in while....BTW I never done a power clean ..will that clear this ??..

[scotty44]

Don't waste ink on a power clean, if that test print is recent then a power clean will just throw ink in the tank...
Bi directional and calibration "should" sort it out, DT adjustment which is in the service menu (if it's the same as the VP300)
A test print like this..... you need to make sure you set it to what looks best, you need to go through each section and set it to the - or +


Your test print shows magenta head is fine, I had a print like this which dropped a magenta shadow around the image and it needed a new head to fix the problem :(

[Ravisteam]

Hi Scotty thanks for the detailed explanation ..I have done a Bi-direc Adjustment (It was well out ) ..And also put the heater up to 44C ..Test print came better than before ..Also printed that Logo again as a vector graphic and that magenta spray was not there ....Still small letters and lines are not Sharpe as my Desktop printer (Never had a Solvent printer before so cannot compare ) ..
But I am happy now thanks you so much again ..

BTW..What is your heater temp ??..
Does calibration improve the quality ??

Also where do you buy Banner, Sticker , Canvas materials from ..??
Also printable HTV what do you recommend .. ??..I bought some from GrafityP but I heard Xpress Soldark is good ..

Again thanks for the support ...

[scotty44]

A slight knock in transit could of knocked the heads out a little, good to hear the over spray has gone well worth doing the calibration, every setting that can be changed is worth testing just to get it running the best you can, I don't have the VP any more, to be honest it didn't do what I wanted it to IE small stuff so sold it and got the BN20 which is bang on the VP was great on the large prints and the canvas came out great but just not 100% on the smaller prints. I had my heater running 45 for everything, all my vinyl came from Xpres/Grafityp and the canvas I got from Colourbyte
Another thing you can try is changing the Media type and colour management setting in VW , mine worked best set to semi gloss and sign and display