AngieF;153475 wrote:Ok so those of you still following my battle with the SG500 - can I ask you to take a look at this test print? Does it look right to you? I never did one on my 400 so have no idea what it's meant to look like. I've been going back and forth with Sawgrass about the quality of the printing from the printer - I simply refuse to believe it can be a case of just bad colour management. As well as having horrible, faded colours they are really mottled. The blacks aren't black and there is no depth to the colour. After a lot of to-ing a fro-ing, they printed out a design I sent them on their printers and sent them to us to press along with some blank sheets so we could rule out press/paper issues (I knew it wasn't as everything was FINE with the 400 - the only thing that's changed is the printer). These looked great, just as they used to but surprise surprise, the ones printed on ours looked rubbish. They sent us new inks and instructed us to do 5 rounds of flushes to get the new ink flowing and there has been absolutely no change in the quality of the print. So it's not the ink, it's not the settings as the file printed fine for them, it's not the paper and it's not the press.
Once I had got the new inks up and running I printed this test image and was really shocked at how bad it looked. The black is brown and it looks really 'dimpled' - it looks like it will press with the terribly mottling we are experiencing. Having never printed one, I'm interested what you think as I know things can look wildly different on the paper to how they press.Has anyone printed a test image they can show me to compare?
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Hi Angie,
We don't deal with Sawgrass printers directly, but did supply Ricoh printers (what Sawgrass are based on) years ago. Looking at the test print image you attached it does look 'about right' to me. The test print image will print at 'speed priority' setting so it swill always look quite poor in honesty. It looks very similar to how the SG400 printed its test print.
Which type of paper did you print on when printing the test image? Was it plain copier or dye sub paper? Plain paper will worsen the result due to the lack of coating on the surface, the ink will bleed more and appear more faded / washed out.
The SG500 printers (in our experience and opinion) MUST be used with genuine Sawgrass inks and in conjunction with the VPM print software. I can see you're using the genuine inks but are you printing form the VPM software? Or are you printing form 3rd party software such as Photoshop or Serif etc?
The SG400 printer could use 3rd party software and also 3rd party icc profiles without issue. However, the SG500 MUST use the Sawgrass print software in order to print well. We have tested SG500 using 3rd party software and the print will go form being fine (with Sawgrass software) to being extremely poor (faded, lack of colour, lack of accuracy) when printed form 3rd party software, we tested both Photoshop and Serif with the SG500.
We found that using 3rd party software caused the printer to print poorly without any explanation. The only factor was the change in software. We later found that the firmware within the printer caused this. Another way that Sawgrass helps prevent the use of 3rd party inks or software being used with their printers.
With the lack of ability to use 3rd party software this also prevents the use of 3rd party icc profiles as well.
The SG500 obtains its colour management from the Sawgrass software via inbuilt profiles. So, if you are using their software and inks, in theory it should be printing well without issues. If this is the case I'd definately look to return it to the supplier.
If you're using 3rd party software, its likely this is the cause of the issue.
I hope this helps.
Alex