Looking for advice on a color matching problem. Doing a 3ft x 3 ft square tile mural for a new customer opening a new restaurant. I have made 29 of the 36 tiles with no problems, but the last 7 are causing me grief in regards to matching color to the others I have already done. I printed transfers on a Epson 4800 Hybrid using Sawgrass Sublijet ink, Johnson Plastics paper for use on 6" glossy tiles. My settings are Ceramic, high quality, mirror, clip art & text. 400 degrees F @ 7 minutes each tile. I've also tried some other combinations of settings that did not work. I've attached some photos to show the problem tile vs. the correct color tiles for your review. Need to match all other tiles to be consistent with rest of project.
Frustrated with results on these last tiles. Need to deliver to customer soon.
Does anybody have any advice and/or suggestions to resolve my situation.
Are you doing nozzle checks? When I first started, I ran into some color problems and once I did a nozzle cleaning, I was fine. I now do one every time I start a new project.
Yes. Everytime I print. Nozzle checks are fine...no problem there. If I don't print for a while I still do a nozzle check just to keep things open. That all checks out.
I am assuming pressure is not an issue since you got the majority of the tiles to look good. If you are doing tiles back-to-back, you might want to give the heat press time to heat back up to 400 degrees or extend the time. These are the three key factors for the heat press: time, pressure & temperature.
Did all the bad tiles start coming at the end or were they periodically spread out. I ask because if it was at the end, you might want to try and uninstall the software and reinstall it. Something in the software might have changed. If they were spread out, then it might be the tiles. You might want to check by pressing some samples on to polyester fabric from the fabric store (much cheaper than dye sub tiles) to see if either one of the suggestions above does the trick.
Besides the software, it might (but I doubt it) be the paper. The ink should behave the same since you have printed several other tiles successfully.
Not sure if any of this will help, but it could start to eliminate some of the potential options. Best of luck.
It almost looks like you printed them with the Chromablast driver. Check to make sure that on your Powerdriver IQ, you do not have the Dual CMYK box checked, as that would altermate jobs and print every other job with the Chromablast ink side. Otherwise it would have to be a heat or time issue with your press, or you dropped some print heads and they are not all printing.
It almost looks like you printed them with the Chromablast driver. Check to make sure that on your Powerdriver IQ, you do not have the Dual CMYK box checked, as that would altermate jobs and print every other job with the Chromablast ink side. Otherwise it would have to be a heat or time issue with your press, or you dropped some print heads and they are not all printing.
Thanks to you Kevin and all others who responded to my post. I looked and tried what you suggested and that was in fact the problem. I can't believe it! I have no idea how the Dual CMYK box got checked. Anyhow, it worked. I unchecked it and proceeded to print. Printed 7 transfers in less than an hour; all correct. Everything is o.k.!! Can't wait to heatpress the actual tiles. Unfortunately just wasted some tiles, paper and ink. As they say.....as long as you learn from your mistakes.
Help - Ceramic Tile Color Match 
