The printer stopping we believe was an issue with the take up system. I can't blame the rip for that.
We seem to run into issues with the negative imaging (black = white, whites = black) almost always when we have multiple layers in our files. We use finecut, so we have at least a cut layer and a print layer in most files we print day to day. This issue happens in both corel x3 and illustrator cs3. Even when printing is turned off for the cut layer... the guys say we can delete the cut layer, merge all layers into one as needed and get it to print without the 'negative image' issue occurring.
However, its a crapshoot still because it seems vector work can also wind up getting mirrored (no rhyme or reason found for it yet). The reverting to an older printer driver mentioned earlier seems to have helped, but not completely eliminated this problem.
Almost always the guys print directly from the design app to the rip, then take it into preflight to double check sizing, tweak colors, etc...
These guys are working mostly on day to day repeat stuff. Various logos, vehicle logo sets, etc... I tend to work on large wraps (hence my frustration on the car wrap the other day).
I've not gotten confident enough to panel out a job in layout tool. I have played with it, and i will be working on a small inhouse job soon. Even then, I don't trust it, and each side of the trailer will be a raster image.
The only way we have been able to get it to print consistently, is to rsterize the art prior to printing. The quickest way of handling this is to export, and then open it directly in the rip (taking it to preflight automatically). But the guys sometimes rasterize and then print from the design app they are using.
Keep in mind, that while many of the files we use can have alot of lens effects and whatnot, most day to day runs are pretty standard vector files with solid fills, or simple gradients. I would understand if the trouble files contained alot of special effects.. but from experience iwht our other systems, we tend to rasterize those types of files beforehand anyways.
The latest anomoly, was a series of pdf files supplied to us for a museum, which contained alot of text. We had 100 of these things, each one different text, consisting of a small logo up top, and standard times new roman at 20pt or so, ranging from 1 to 4 paragraphs of text. The friggin thing would print about 3 lines of text, and then the rest of it, any open letters would have solid fills (O, P, A, R, etc) would all have their centers filled black. The only thing we could figure from tests, was if too much text appeared in the page, it would crap out like that. And this is what I mean by having to jump through hoops and figure what the heck is going on. We had 100 different signs, and we're supposed to spend the better half of a day trying to figure out why it's not printing simple pdf text stuff? After screwing with it for about 3 hours, they figured it was faster to rasterize all of them and print instead.
I am currently researching other rips, but we just laid down some cash for this printer, workstation, and a really difficult rip. It's not like we can afford to go out and buy 3 other RIPS to 'play' with.
There is also some onyx or hp local event upcoming that we plan on attending (I don't know the details yet, just heard it in passing late last week by our manager).
until I can get the takeup in.
