Print and Cut misalignment on Roland.

Hello fellow technicians. I would like to share with you my recent experience on field.

I was out for service call with one of our customers, who had print-cut adjustment issue on Roland VS 540. No matter what values he puts on [PRINT-CUT ADJ. SETTING], the cut offset remained same on feed direction. Besides, all the texts on print job double printed, so called ghosting effect.

Before calling in a technician, customer did basic preventive procedures by himself like cleaned encoder strip, carefully inspected pinch wheels to make sure they are in good condition, cleaned grit roller and performed print-cut on different media types. Unfortunately, nothing worked for him. Cut offset was still there.

I did not consider to even thinking about any board or cutting flex cable replacement from the very beginning simply relying on fact that the cut line on scan direction was perfectly aligned, no awry or offset on print-cut test pattern. The issue was solely on feed direction.

First thing came to mind was feed motor failing. Through [Service Menu]->[Motor Menu]->[Aging]->[Feed] I did test feed motor to make sure it doesn’t fails. Printer stressed feed motor by turning grit rollers back and force. In approximately 10 minutes, I interrupted motor aging procedure by hitting [Enter] key on printer’s control panel.

According to service manual, feed motor’s life time on VS series is about 3000 hours. So I navigated to [Service Menu]->[History Menu]->[Motor Group]->[Motor Hours F] menu to check feed motor working hour status. It worked 200 hrs. so far. Performed [SERVO LOCK] test to excite the motor. Printed cut test pattern, no luck. My assumption about feed motor did not confirmed so I move on forward to work out other possibilities. Checked gears engaged with feed motor to make sure they are not cracked. Lubricated feed motor and gears with grease. Still no luck.

Grit encoder and the board was my next step to test. Checked grit encoder by navigating to [Service Menu]->[Motor Menu]->[G-ENC. Check]. The test completed successfully leaving me in even more confused situation. I noticed that the grit encoder was covered with ink mist and debris on certain spots.

I took it out of printer, gave it a good and gentle clean with 70% isopropyl alcohol and then fixed grit encoder disc back to encoder stopper, made sure it is in between encoder reader slit, turned printer on, printed cut test pattern and voilà! Like it never happened.

Ghosting effect disappeared.

Cut contour was right where it supposed to be without any adjustments.

Hope my experience will help in cut offset troubleshooting.