can anyone help with grenadier problems please?

[BostonSigns]

Got this sorted know BP graphics are on the case! :lol1: Working through it know!

Thanks anyway!

Cheers

Paddy

[Robert Lambie]

quote :

Problems:

Vinyl is curling round edges when applied to materials such as Foamex and Ali!

this isnt the machine mate.. probably not leaving the prints long enough to cure. best leave 24hrs to rid prints of solvent. i would advise hanging on their side. i have been told the solvent does not veaporate it drops out.

quote :

Patchey printing, we just did a big print and main background colour was solid red but we have found quite bad patches, where the red becomes considerably lighter!

not sure mate.. . profile, dirty vinyl? etc.. im no expert in this feild but i do have one. if it prints perfect in one area of the vinyl and not the other, ide guess it to be the vinyl at fault.. if pooling, flooding in certain areas it could be the profile isnt at its best with that type of vinyl.. im sure some experts will help you better here.., 😉

quote :

Finally we are having trouble ripping the jobs, one of the jobs was a little over 10mb but ended up having to brake it down and basically mess around for 2-3 hours to get the printer ot take it without it crashing out! it took an hour to rip a logo approx 5mb! is this right?

again im guessing, but.. is your computer performance up to required spec? what type of rip is it.. troop? or roland standard? just asking as it may help others help you better.

[John Cornfield]

Blotchy vinyl – It is the vinyl something to do with a chemical wash, it only is noticeable on large solid areas of colour blue, red and black are worst. I think there may be better vinyls than the metamark but profiles are the issue. We have a profiler coming in later this month and we will have a lot better profiles for more media mactac, avery, oracal etc.

Ripping – funny old game small files can take ages and big files can zap through not got to the bottom of it but think it has something to do with original file and application created in. Try to save it as a tiff or eps and bring straight into the rip rather than printing from application it may help.
Goes without saying that if you have to wind your computer up with a wee arm on the side probably needs a better spec. A decent custom built PC for a rip should cost you around £1200 excluding monitor if you want a brand name then dell is what i recommend.

DELL Precision 650 MiniTower – Single Xeon 2.8GHz/533MHz, Int NIC/Floppy (H505mm*W226mm*D503mm)
1.0GB DDR266 Dual Channel Memory (2X512)
80GB IDE (7,200rpm) Hard Drive
48X CD-RW
128MB nVidia QuadroFX 500 (Dual-Monitor VGA or DVI/VGA) Graphics Card

This spec would be a base level for a rip spend another bit on processor and memory and you have a ferrari.

[Rodney Gold]

These are mainly media issues , especially if you are using cheap media.
The solvents attack the vinyl and the adhesives around cut lines , espcially prevalent if you cut on a dark printed background. You will stop a lot of that if you leave a white border. Patchy printing could be media , tho you would see banding or dropouts rather than large patchy areas , does this get worse after printing awhile or is it constant? (these issues are not only confined to Solvent , they also apply to mild or eco solvents.)
We tried metamark on our soljet and as far as I remember , it was dreadful. We use Graphitak(typ) S22P or Starrex (x-film) 7 yr polymeric. They arent the cheapest around , but we have the profiles taped and they print reliably and consistently every time.

RIP speed depends on the RIP and the puter processor. the biggest determinant of rip speed in terms of hardware is processing power , then ram , then HD.

You could try the Roland RIP – Colorip , its ver 2.2 has a new halftone method called precison Stoastic and this actually gives a hugely faster rip , saves inks and gives a superior print tho you would have to generate profiles for your inkset , but you can easily tweak an existing one.
A 10 meg file ripped sould NOT take longer than 10 mins with a P4 2.8 or so , but that , as I say , depends on the rip.
At any rate , its way better to rip without printing and then print from a queue , this way the machine can rip in the background. I would suggest you buy a real powerful puter for your machine and ONLY use it for ripping or color corrections etc. You might as well spend the extra grand or so considering it will hugely increase the functionality of your 30k printer
There is something you have to bear in mind with a digital printer — time = money.
To give an example , the cost of your machine over 2 yrs is 40k , IE you must amortise the machine over 2 yrs and thus it cost 20k a year or 1.6k per month , or 80 quid a day or 8 quid an hour WHETHER YOU PRINT OR NOT!!!
So for example if you have to print at 2 sq meters an hour on poor media to get any saleable print vs 4 sq meters on more expensive material which can hold the inks better , you have to work out whether the time lost is worth the savings on cheaper. This applys to any operation or process which reduces the speed of the machine.