CMYK Ribbons

[artofacks1]

Hello,

What CMYK ribbons do you recommend? What dealers do you use for your ribbons? I noticed that there are many options to buy ribbons from. Is there a place to learn on the difference in quality of the different options?

Price is important but not at the sacrifice of quality.

 

[tamiya]

which machine?

Have gone thru several sets of CMYK+W from different brands,
find them much of a muchness to be bluntly honest.
Half the brands of foil refills are probably manufactured
by the other half anyways so there ain't huge differences.

On old Edge I get best results from keeping each set used exclusively
for CMYK+W with all 5 shuttles running together at same usage length always.
Avoid the "save foil" option even if it feels wasteful.

 

[artofacks1]

Edge fx printer. Thanks

 

[tamiya]

Are you already using 3rd party refills for your FX?

assuming you've already worked out the refilling logistics
(FX ribbon has smaller core than old Edge, so I'm told)
then yeah it's worth trying any of the refill suppliers

signFoil, ZeroNine, Caxton... each have their fans,
they all (can be made to) work fine, I'd be more concerned about
local &/or timely supply availability of fresh restocks
over actual brand itself

 

[GMS Product Manager]

If you know anything about ink jets, you know if you don't have the correct profile, you'll have a hard time hitting specific colors, ink limits/over saturation, delamination, and that's just to start.

Gerber goes to great lengths to profile (heat/speed/pressure) each of their foils with each of their materials. Using third party ribbon is usually a cost savings when you purchase them. But there is greater waste in both time and material when you have to experiment with different profiles or settings to make your third party ribbons work.

If you are always printing on a particular material, and you find that a third party foil works well, it is tempting to go for the savings. But if you are switching between different materials for different jobs, it will cost you time and material to find the right settings Turn-key is sometimes more expensive, but do you have more time or money?

Once you experiment and find the right settings for your special combination, you can save those settings in GspPlot. And as long as you always use the media and foil color that you saved, it should work great. Remembering all the combinations you save will take some organization such as saving it in the same folder with the job.

Doug Goodloe
Gerber Specialist

PS: Tamiya has the foil core size backwards. Edge 1 & 2 foils are on 1" cores, FX are larger. You can use Edge 1 & 2 foils in the FX with adapter caps, but you can't go the other way. GSP, Duracoat, and Z9 foils are in stock all the time at www.ShopGMS.com.

 

[Mosh]

Spoken like a true Gerber Salesperson...LOL

 

[jfiscus]

We always use the regular Gerber ones here. Never wanted to mess around with potential problems; if it aint broke - don't fix it!
And if you aint making money with your current tools(foils) - you're doing it wrong!

 

[artofacks1]

We always use the regular Gerber ones here. Never wanted to mess around with potential problems; if it aint broke - don't fix it!
And if you aint making money with your current tools(foils) - you're doing it wrong!

I am new to the industry , but I can appreciate "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

I love learning new things and it's real cool everyone post replies. So far all my projects are spot. Heck, I don't even own cmyk foils lol!

 

[CanuckSigns]

If you know anything about ink jets, you know if you don't have the correct profile, you'll have a hard time hitting specific colors, ink limits/over saturation, delamination, and that's just to start.

Gerber goes to great lengths to profile (heat/speed/pressure) each of their foils with each of their materials. Using third party ribbon is usually a cost savings when you purchase them. But there is greater waste in both time and material when you have to experiment with different profiles or settings to make your third party ribbons work.

If you are always printing on a particular material, and you find that a third party foil works well, it is tempting to go for the savings. But if you are switching between different materials for different jobs, it will cost you time and material to find the right settings Turn-key is sometimes more expensive, but do you have more time or money?

Once you experiment and find the right settings for your special combination, you can save those settings in GspPlot. And as long as you always use the media and foil color that you saved, it should work great. Remembering all the combinations you save will take some organization such as saving it in the same folder with the job.

Doug Goodloe
Gerber Specialist


PS: Tamiya has the foil core size backwards. Edge 1 & 2 foils are on 1" cores, FX are larger. You can use Edge 1 & 2 foils in the FX with adapter caps, but you can't go the other way. GSP, Duracoat, and Z9 foils are in stock all the time at www.ShopGMS.com.

The only issue i've had using 3rd party refills is printing white on Edge positive film, only gerber brand foils will work properly, therefore the only Gerber branded foils we stock are white, around here Gerber is around 3x the price of Duracoat, not to mention the local gerber dealer never seems to have stock.

We use our edge for 99% spot colour industrial labels and such, anything that requires anything beyond that gets printed on our roland.