Do you use a take up rail?

[Tharnpheffa]

Good morning all,
We just bought a take up rail for the 540 because we have a large job producing a series of posters for a number of locations.
The posters have high res photos on them so the files are not small. My dilema is this: we want to run the printer all night, & my boss wants to run 58 separate posters together in each run.
That means I either attempt to export them as an EPS from flexi and bring in as one unit into Versaworks (the bosses idea) or I save them in groups and nest them in Versaworks or export them as individual jobs and que them up in the rip.
What's the smart way to do this? If there's any pause between jobs and the printer resets itself my take up rail will stop functioning and my posters will roll out into the room all night. Maybe I could que them up and find a way to stop the reset action?
Once again I thank you.

I'm experimenting with the nesting option right now..

 

[zmatalucci]

not to get off topic, but who did you buy the takeup reel from?

 

[Tharnpheffa]

Sign Supply in Orlando

It's a Roland Media Take Up Rail (or Roll)

 

[petepaz]

i am always nervous about running the machine all night
- material gets off line or run out
- ink runs out

 

[Tharnpheffa]

Yep, I'm nervous.
I've done it running several copies of a single file. Worked well, made sure my inks were at least half full and started it early enough to watch whether the vinyl started walking or not (marker line right up to the edge of the media)

 

[cdiesel]

We run ours unattended all the time. We also have the take up reels factory installed on the Pro III printers. I'm not sure if they function a little differently than on the Versacams, because ours don't stop taking up the media between jobs.
What we typically do is bring all of the jobs into VW, and just send them to the print queue individually. Make sure your ink is full enough for the job, and make sure the paper/vinyl is tracking straight from the roll and onto the take-up.

 

[Checkers]

I couldn't imagine running a wide format printer without a take-up reel.
If your computer has enough memory, ram, etc, rip and let it run.
One note though, just don't attempt to print more than what's on the roll

Checkers

 

[Tharnpheffa]

Got that covered. Please see original question for my dilema.
Thanks ;-)

 

[mark in tx]

Bring them all into the RIP and nest.
And they might be finished ripping by the time you get back in the morning.
Just kidding, it will take a long time to rip, but I think it will rip faster than if they are converted to eps files.

 

[cdiesel]

Just click on "RIP while printing" under the Job Management tab.

 

[Replicator]

Just click on "RIP while printing" under the Job Management tab.

Will that cause every job in the queue to print consecutively ?

 

[WDP]

We have XC's and you should be very careful with leaving unattended for to long.
Common problems are:
• Skewing resulting in envitable crash if to far skewed
• Heavy Rolls wave up if not prefeed due to tension
• Run out of ink in the middle of night causing dry up of heads

 

[Tharnpheffa]

Thanks for your help guys!
It took 20 minutes to rip 17 sets of four 20" x 30" nested EPS posters and they took 11.5hours to print.
We calculated how many posters would fit on the roll first and then ran a pen line next to the edge of the media on the printer to detemine if it was printing out straight (after giving it 10 min).
Then I locked up, went home, and imagined all the terrible things that could be happening at the shop during the night... ;-)

 

[Graphics2u]

Great! Glad it all worked out. I run my mutoh unattended quite alot. Problems are rare.

 

[Tharnpheffa]

** As an aside, I've been running a job since 7am with my doors open. The media shifted about 1/8" in 7 hours.
As soon as it started to rain/humidity rose the the media started walking (skewing)
BIG time.

 

[selt]

Leave the lights on around the printer. The printer has optical eyes to check for media. If the lights are off and you run out of media the printer will never know it and keep printing all over your shiny, clean platten.

The heads will not dry up if you run out of ink as long as you have not changed the EMPTY MODE from STOP to CONT.

 

[visualeyez]

We did this a lot at the last place we worked. The owner hooked up a webcam to a computer close to the printer and always had it online. This way he could watch it at night (not to mention he could monitor our work progress from anywhere with internet access).