muddy solid colors on 6010

My 6010 can not reproduce well a solid color surrounded by black. The inset color will be lighter on one edge and darker on the other edge, or the color will have a muddled look to it, not smooth. We print a lot of solid colors on heavy card stock for business card printing, and producing smooth solid colors is extremely difficult. Canon techs have said machine is "within specs". Which means they will not fix it. The service manager did print my file on other 7010's and they had the same problems. This indicates to me that the 6010/7010 is flawed in this respect. I'm looking for anyone else with similar problem and any ideas as to get the best "smooth" solid colors.

 

What controller are you running? If you are using Fiery, PLEASE make sure your operators are leaving the DPI setting on 600dpi. Do not change it to 1200dpi. This is a big no no if you are having color problems and mottled or graininess. Also are they calibrating correctly? Calibration is a 4 step process on the imagepress, if they are skipping any one of those steps quality could be inconsistent.

 

Yes, I am using Fiery and do not use 1200 dpi, as that just makes it worse. Also we calibrate in the 4 step process; engine reset - shading correction - full gradation adjust then calibration. Still have mottled or grainy looking solid colors. The Canon tech suggested trying different screen combinations. Like the printer's halftone - gradation smoothing - adv. smoothing, etc. But my main problem is at the standard setting, 600 dpi everything else set to standard or normal, and the color does not lay down smooth next to other colors. And when the techs recreated with same settings on different machines, they got the same results, mottled colors.

 

Trying changing your colour setup (in Command Workstation device centre) to source "none" if you are running a Fiery driven RIP. If you have a newer RIP there is an option to “Use embedded profile when present”. Use this if you have it and set the source to your most common source space.

I find gradation gives a horrible print and have set both my Graduation and Resolution to High Resolution on the engine (found under Additional Functions->System Settings->Device Management->Dither Patterns).

These two changes have dramatically improved our print quality.

Here is a brochure showing the various pattern the machine creates. The driver/command workstation settings just assign which option (graduation or resolution as set on the engine) is assigned to which item within the document and do not actually change the patterns themselves.

BTW I have my engine set to 1200 with no issues.