why am i having colour issues with the grenadier?

[Digital Dave]

The reason you are getting inaccurate results is that as you would expect, the Roland ColouRIP knows how to manage the colours produced by the Roland Eco-SOL ink. However there is a massive difference between the colours produced by the Roland inks and those of the Uniform Brand.

To be honest, you should have been encouraged to spend the extra £1000 to have the Troop RIP, as this would have made your package much easier to use.

[adrianth]

That’s what I’d concluded myself and I’ve told as much to the dealer.
He’s also told me that B&P are dropping Troop in favour of the commercial version of the Roland COLORrip and he supplied me with profiles for Uniform (metamark) materials embeded in the 2.2 COLORrip upgrade which he claims is as good as it’s going to get even if I upgraded to the commercial version.

I can’t believe this to be true.

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[John Cornfield]

I am not sure that B&P are dropping Troop as they just re profiled all their media profiles because scanvec changed the linearisation tables meaning the existing profiles won’t be of any use on new version of Troop.

I would contact B&P and get a copy of Troop providing the will continue to use and offer upgrades on the software. We run Onyx as a rip but the split is about 90% of grenadier users use Troop with the Onyx and other making up 10%.

I can’t recall many or any posts complaining about the Troop rip it is more advanced than what yopu are using but not as advanced as Onyx.

As a fix try printing at 720 res instaead of 360×720 it may be slower but you may see a more consistent colour match.

[Keith Nilsen]

I recently project managed the installation of a Grenadier. Part of the brief was to guarantee that the colour issue was NOT an issue, and that true colour would be produced time after time on the selected media types.

This I achieved with little or no fuss at all, but must immediately point out that I was using the Wasatch RIP software. This was a great tool, very clear and easy to use and accurate in terms of colour reproduction every time. I would recommend it highly for both usability and accuracy. (No, I don’t work for them!)

Hope this helps someone along the digital printing route.

[adrianth]

Thanks for your input, you’ve confirmed what I’ve been assuming. I’ll be contacting B&P shortly.

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[Rodney Gold]

Actually , the color gamut etc between solvent and ecosolvent will not give you wildy varying colours between the 2 , there will be a shift , but nothing totally radical.
What will give you wildly varying colours is the way that the color space you are in is translated to the color space the rip is working in. (RGB to cmyk)
The WASATCH rip is a generic rip , albeit the profiles you use might be more suited for a Soljet , but it can be tweaked to be pretty accurate. In essence the variance between different vinyls will be more about media thickness and calibration and the amount of inks the media can hold before bleeding.
I was informed that cos the machine is a converted machine , the Wasach rip (which is VERY potent , the troop is not more potent) wasnt “allowed” to be used.
A lot depends on what you are printing from , IE is it vector , raster , rgb , Srgb etc etc and what package is doing the rghb – cmyk conversion?
As a first step , DL the pantone charts from http://www.pantone.com (under support) , print em using a profile on your media and compare em to the actual charts. If the print is pretty close , then the RIP is not to blame . You can tweak the profile to match the actual charts as close as possible and then calibrate the screen to match the PRINTED output, If you are trying to match a screen colour to a printed colour without having calibrated the screen etc , then you have no chance of getting it right.
At the end of it all , colour workflow is a minefield and if you really want to get it right , you need profiling hardware and software.
I thought the grenadier came with the troop RIP as standard?

There is another solution however , you can just flush the system and use ecosol inks (the grenadier uses the same heads etc , the pumps albeit solvent resistant should be the same as will the tubes , dampers etc) and then the wasatch RIP will be “perfect” , I doubt the industry you are working for requires the increased durability solvent inks provide.

[adrianth]

I predominately use adobe illustrator cs and adobe photoshop cs in conjunction, from which I export as a version 8 EPS.

I don’t try and match colours to the screen but to pantone swatches.

I’m currently using a profile for the gloss version of the material but the dealer told me it would be more than suitable.

If the Grenadier does include the Troop rip as standard they chose not to tell us.

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[Robert Lambie]

troop doesnt come standard with the gren… it costs about £1000 extra when bought along with the machine.
i was advised to buy it, but was also told that it comes with a roland standard rip that didnt cost anything when you buy the machine.
my choice was made on troop simply because after spending 25 grand on machine & laminator why penny pinch on something like the software. 🙄
im not saying anyone has penny pinched by the way… just my own thoughts when purchasing.

[adrianth]

We went down to B&P with full intentions of buying a Rip but were dissuaded quite vigorously and the Roland COLORrip, as I’ve mentioned in my previous posts, was presented as a wondrous thing that could do everything we required – plus it was free.

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[Peter Shaw]

I have been assured by B & P that they are dropping Troop and moving to Wasatch.

I use Colorip – Roland’s “lite” version of Wasatch with my Cadet. I can’t criticise this product at all. It does everything I need and I can’t see what spending another £1000 would get me.

The problem lies in getting the correct profiles for the printer/
RIP/substrate combination.

Most vinyl suppliers that have bothered, have supplied Troop based profiles. Hopefully they will now be able to provide Wasatch and save us all a lot of problems.

In general I have not found vinyl suppliers very helpful in wanting to supply profiles. Has anyone else found this to be the case?

Peter

[Robert Lambie]

reagrding profiles from suppliers? well to be honest. i have found them helpful. 😕 i dont mean they are chucking them at me, what i mean is they are doing their best to get me one for my machine for their vinyl. makes sense really…(but not saying they all do) if you dont have the profile how can you use/buy their vinyl?
looking at it from the suppliers end… profiles “done properly” can be expensive… now multiply that by the amount of machines on the market and they would be out a packet to offer them all free?
it could/would obviously be in their best interest to them to offer this, but with the amount of new machines coming on the market they will be hard pushed fincialy to keep up? 🙄

[Peter Shaw]

I take your point Robert but what if we consider the situation I find myself in: colorip and a cadet.

B & P tell me their are some 140 cadets using colorip. now if each of these uses a roll of vinyl a month at say, £100 a roll, there is a market accessible for £168,000 worth of vinyl a year. An one-off investment of around £300 to make a profile seems fairly modest to me. Now multiply that by the machine/RIP combinations and you have a vast market.

My preferred supplier seems to think profiles are B & P’s problem; B & P aren’t going to rush to make profiles for a competitor when they are still trying to make them for their own vinyl.

In fact if you look at the list of vinyl suppliers in the country, and then the profiles each of them will supply, its a pretty dismal picture for a fast growing part of our industry.

Perhaps you’ve had a better experience if, as you say, you find the suppliers helpful. Why not name them? I think it would be great to pass on the names of companies who want to help customers and do actually deliver.

In fact if anyone out there is using colorip and a cadet and is getting half decent colour matching and quality, why not post the details? I certainly will when I can !!

Peter Shaw

[Rodney Gold]

Try http://www.rolandgg.com and DL their profiles for 2.1 or 2.2 , they list a lot of media. Media suppliers would be crazy to try profile for every machine and all variations , inksets and their variations , every RIP and every resolution. Way too many variables. Some do , like graphityp , most leave it to the machine suppliers or if they do do extensive profiling , its tied in for the machine mnfgrs “OEM” brand (which is mnfgrd by one of the media suppliers like 3m etc)
The machine mnfgrs make their money out of ink and media sales as much as from the initial sale , so they would rather you not use aftermarket anything –
A fine line to walk ,wanting your own media sales , but you still need to profile for stuff you dont sell to keep the customers who bought your machine but want to use other stuff happy, aty least they will use your inks!

[Rodney Gold]

http://www.rolanddg.com (japanese site) , I typoed it in the previous post

[Robert Lambie]

i dont use a great range of suppliers for vinyls. the ones i have am intrested in using have done their best to help and still are…

oracal = europoint = cameron
mactac = beverly ridings
grafityp = Joe Bartnicki
3m + ritrama = wm smith = mark brown

[Keith Nilsen]

I agree with Rob…

I would conclude through trial and error which materials work best with the profiles you know are right, and once you have done that then stick to those suppliers.

After all there really shouldn’t be too great a reason to be running a vast array of media through your machine, just because you can. I prefer to accept the limitations of any given scenario, and turn those limitations into a bullet-proof solution. If or when necessity dictates another course of action, thats when I look into it.

Of course, the get-out clause is that this is an opinion only!! Every person/company has there own route forward which suits them best…

[Peter Shaw]

The problem with the profiles at Roland’s site is that they are for the Versacamm not the Cadet. For example using a “generic” profile on my Cadet will work but colour matching is hopeless and all greys are distinctly red/grey. You can get away with it for some work but not if a customer wants to get near a particular spot colour or tonal range on a full colour picture.

It seems so pointless to have some good software and a great printer all let down by a few material matching parameters. So many times in the past we have complained about lack of compatibility across technical systems – here we have an overall well designed system with a built in compatibility feature which is being ignored.

[Peter Shaw]

quote :

After all there really shouldn’t be too great a reason to be running a vast array of media through your machine

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not looking for lots of media types. Just give me one 5/7 year vinyl at a reasonable price with the matched profile for Colorip/Cadet that works. There doesn’t seem to be one out there yet.

Peter Shaw

[Chris Wool]

hi
if you want ti insure you get nutral greys then check the file in photoshop first that the area is a nutral grey not whot you see on the monitor if nessasary create your own profile using the separation rules i dont think that profilers can acomodate us all – lost count of the number of times i have tried to close the loop between scanner monitor printer back to scanner and compare

chris

[Rodney Gold]

I would suggest having your machine looked over if your greys are red and you have such major problems colour matching. Im being serious here , we started going greenish in our blacks and even tho the head and test print output showed fine , there was a slight kink in one of the magenta feed tubes.
The Colorip allows total control over greys if you use the color separation rule.
I can’t understand that the supplier of the machine cannot “fix” your problem. I could understand a small shift , but by what you are saying , there seems to be more than a profiling problem.

[Peter Shaw]

Rodney,

Thanks for the advice. It would not be prudent to detail the level of detail my machine has head from engineers but suffice to say I am satisfied that it is working to spec.

We have spent a lot of time (far too much !!!) doing test prints with different RIP/material combinations and the results prove the criticality of the profile.

Most of our work now uses a profile obtained from a vinyl supplier that gave very poor results on their vinyl, but works quite well with a rival’s vinyl. The greys are good and certainly better than any other profile we tested, while overall colour rendering is not bad – generally prints will be warmer than the original probably due to the obvious problems in the blue range that show on the test print. With some tweaking this would probably become excellent.

I am due 2 vinyl profiles from suppliers shortly and will be delighted to recommend them here if they perform well.

I notice a couple of references to making profiles using the “Seperation Rules”. Can you expand on this for me?

Peter Shaw