Using Freehand with Versa works

[deep six]

Hi All

Just updated my Roland SP300 to a VS540I, mainly because I need to print silver decals. or decals with silver content.

Have been using Freehand for over 10 years now and know it well. In the past was exporting .eps files to the sp300 and printing them out nicely.

Now though I cant figure out how to add silver content to a file and have the VS540I print it out. It may be a matter of importing a swatch library to freehand and I tried that but the freehand folder on the versaworks disc only contains one swatch which is CutContour.
At a standstill now as I badly need to get some work done.

I do have illustrator but very little experience with this so would really like to get freehand working.

Any tips or help greatly appreciated

Cheers

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

If you can set up the spot colour RDG_MetallicSilver that will give you pure metallic ink.
There are also 512 coloured variations I'm not going to list here.
You're better off printing out the metallic color chart from within Versaworks and using the spot color names from there.

 

[deep six]

OK, I was told to use 877C from the pantone metalic swatches but can't seem to get that to work, So do you mean to make a spot color and call it RDG_MetallicSilver and versa works will interpret that as pure silver ??

 

[deep six]

OK, Many thanks signmeup, that worked brilliantly, made a spot colour with zero, cmyk, called it RDG_MetallicSilver and worked a treat.
I have printed out the colour chart but just have to work out if there is a naming convention to print these, I did try to print one colour off the metallic chart but didn't work so still trying to figure that out.
Can you tell me how to make a spot colour for white as the printer just had a new head fitted and I definetely dont want to risk clogging up the white channel

Cheers

 

[deep six]

OK, Many thanks signmeup, that worked brilliantly, made a spot colour with zero, cmyk, called it RDG_MetallicSilver and worked a treat.
I have printed out the colour chart but just have to work out if there is a naming convention to print these, I did try to print one colour off the metallic chart but didn't work so still trying to figure that out.
Can you tell me how to make a spot colour for white as the printer just had a new head fitted and I definetely dont want to risk clogging up the white channel

Cheers

 

[deep six]

OK, Many thanks signmeup, that worked brilliantly, made a spot colour with zero, cmyk, called it RDG_MetallicSilver and worked a treat.
I have printed out the colour chart but just have to work out if there is a naming convention to print these, I did try to print one colour off the metallic chart but didn't work so still trying to figure that out.
Can you tell me how to make a spot colour for white as the printer just had a new head fitted and I definetely dont want to risk clogging up the white channel

Cheers

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

Great stuff... as for the other metallic spot colours, here are a couple to get you started:
RVW-MT-Gold
RVW-MT-Bronze
RVW-MT-Cobalt

And the long list of ~512 colors is along the lines of this:
RVW-MT-01A
...
RVW-MT-25T

Perhaps load up the Roland Metallic Color System Library in Illustrator for a few more hints of the spot colour names, but happy to be of help and pleased that you have had good results so far.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

Sorry, didn't read your entire message, spot color name for white is RDG_WHITE

 

[deep six]

Sorry, didn't read your entire message, spot color name for white is RDG_WHITE

Great stuff... as for the other metallic spot colours, here are a couple to get you started:
RVW-MT-Gold
RVW-MT-Bronze
RVW-MT-Cobalt

And the long list of ~512 colors is along the lines of this:
RVW-MT-01A
...
RVW-MT-25T

Perhaps load up the Roland Metallic Color System Library in Illustrator for a few more hints of the spot colour names, but happy to be of help and pleased that you have had good results so far.

OK, Many thanks signmeup, that worked brilliantly, made a spot colour with zero, cmyk, called it RDG_MetallicSilver and worked a treat.
I have printed out the colour chart but just have to work out if there is a naming convention to print these, I did try to print one colour off the metallic chart but didn't work so still trying to figure that out.
Can you tell me how to make a spot colour for white as the printer just had a new head fitted and I definetely dont want to risk clogging up the white channel

Cheers

 

[deep six]

OK, Got the sliver and white printing fine, but having huge problems getting anything for the metallic color chart to print.
For example, made a spot color, same format as RDG_White but this time typed in RVW-MT-Gold and nothing prints out, tried every color on the metallic chart but nothing.
Tried different naming conventions such as RDG-MT-Gold, and RDG_MT_Gold, and RDG_MettalicGold but nothing works.

Stuck here as I need to print out some silver but not the full strength RDG_MettalicSilver as it is too dark

Any ideas, tips, workarounds much appreciated

Cheers

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

That's odd, because I copied those spot colour names directly from my Roland Metallic Color Library chart.
In the File Format section of the job in Versaworks, is it correctly identifying the spot colours?

 

[deep six]

Not sure whats up, But I got the spot color names from the metallic color chart within versa works, checked and re-checked the naming convention but cant get it to work.
When I created the spot colours just used freehand and created a new spot color with zero CMYK and called it
RVW-MT-Gold
RVW-MT-Bronze
RVW-MT-Cobalt etc but nothing. Thats why I was wondering about the naming convention. Got me stumped

 

[deep six]

OK, Think I found an answer, there is a check box in the file section of versa works that allows it to process spot colors, this was not ticked, cant imagine why you have the option but sounds like what I need to tick,
Haven't tried it yet but think that will fix it

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

If I still had a metallic card installed in my machine, I'd give it another go just to test it out. We ditched metallic and white about 18 months ago. Wasn't worth the maintenance and cost of wasted cartridges.
Here's a test file I just whipped up. How does it print at your end?
Dropbox - MT-Test.pdf

Just to be sure, you are using a print mode with metallic in the profile?

MetallicSilver will only output silver tones, no CMYK mixes.

 

[deep six]

Thanks mate, got it working but having lots of fun redoing all the colours as the old SP300 produces a different shade to the VS540I even when using the same cmyk values.
Nice printer though, I really needed silver and white as 90 percent of my jobs are small motorcycle decals. Just got to be sure I keep cycling those two colours every couple of days so the head doesn't clog up.
Cheers

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

Great to hear you're up and running with it all.
Hope it gives you many years of good output from now on.