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General workflow for improving quality

Introduction

Follow the general workflow to solve quality problems and improve the output. The preconditions are that you:

  • Have performed maintenance regularly.

    Perform automatic and manual maintenance with incidents, and perform periodic maintenance once a month or when the printer requests it. For more information, see Maintain the print quality.

  • Have calibrated the media.

    All media types have to be calibrated first. Redo the calibration for every media width.

    For more information, see Calibrate the media.

  • See a defect in a high pass mode: [High Quality], [Specialty],[Matte Quality], [Matte Specialty], [Backlit] or [Backlit Density].

Table 1. Shortcuts into different solution directions

Do you see or experience...

Solution

a problem only or mainly visible in the 1st meter?

Perform a media calibration, see Calibrate the media.

regular, sharp, light lines?

Perform maintenance including nozzle optimization see Guidelines to maintain the print quality.

a gradient within a swath?

Try a slower print mode.

OD banding or lines within the swath boundary?

Clean the platen and the buffer plate, see Clean the platen and Clean the buffer plate and redo a media calibration.

problems regarding handling or application robustness?

Contact your application specialist or look into the Media Verification Protocol.

General workflow to solve quality problems

You can stop at any step when the issue is solved.

NOTE

Most important actions are clean the platen and clean the buffer plate.

Procedure

  1. Print a printhead quality check chart to see if the problem occurs here as well.
  2. Start automatic maintenance
  3. Start manual maintenance
  4. Start periodic maintenance.
  5. Change the media settings. Check you used the correct media settings and media category in the RIP (e.g. [Media thickness] ).
  6. Calibrate the printhead
  7. Calibrate the media
  8. Calibrate the printhead carriage
  9. Print a printhead quality check chart again, and Analyze the printhead quality check chart

Results

In case the problem remains, use the printhead quality check chart to identify the issue and try to solve that specific quality problem. For more information, see Solve specific quality problems.