Epson metallic color setup

[Tatonka]

I haven't messed with the metallic ink much on our S80600 since we bought the printer almost a year ago, but have a job that it might work for now. I can get the machine to lay down the silver, but it really doesn't seem to give any different effect other than to darken the color. I had hoped it'd give a decent shinyness or some sort metallic sheen to the color I put on top. Am I expecting too much out of the ink?

I'm probably missing something in the process, even though I follow the "printing with wh/Ms" guide.

 

[jfiscus]

We have the silver ink option in our s70675. If you only print silver in an area it can look neat, but using it under/over colors just makes it darker to me also. I don't think it is useful at all unless you run decals that would requires spot silver. We replaced our cartridge with the cleaner cartridge a while ago. When we bought our new Epson we went with the dual-CMYK S60600.

 

[unclebun]

We haven't found using metallic silver as an underlayer to be real useful, though when I went to the Epson introductory demo they were printing color swatches using the silver underlayer to create metallic colors. Unfortunately they didn't provide a file to look at or a guide to how to set it up to see what they were doing. I think you have to cut the percentage of silver used in the underlayer, and also in the color to get it to turn out.

 

[BIG EASY DOES IT]

If you were printing direct to metallic you would have to take into account the change in color from white media to metallic media and adjust your colors accordingly. I would imagine the same would be true for this. When the rip renders the color does it know that the base color is not going to be white?

 

[Tatonka]

If you were printing direct to metallic you would have to take into account the change in color from white media to metallic media and adjust your colors accordingly. I would imagine the same would be true for this. When the rip renders the color does it know that the base color is not going to be white?

I have my spot color in illustrator to be a silver to give some indication of what the color would look like when it's printed. I figured I'd have to adjust the color in illustrator or Onyx to make it end up the color I want, which isn't a huge deal. I just don't get the effect I had expected with the metallic ink underneath the regular inks

 

[Coban]

Anyone have photos of the metallic coming off these? Considering the machine but have yet to see the metallic.

 

[woolly]

if its any help i use the roland and versaworks the rip has a swatch of metalic colours so you just select the spot colour, all well and good if your rip does that but if you have to mix it your self some ideas.

as i understand it the silver is not printed as a underlay or over (like you would use white) its part of the colour make up just like red is 100y n100 m you can make that metalic by printing 100y 100m 25 silver, values have to be played with but thats the general idea so the silver is part of the colour make up. beauty of it is you can then print met silver & gold on to black vinyl as the silver is very opaque the colours work on non white media.
the name metallic is a bit of a mislead as we think as metallic as speckled bright spots which it is not, just a bright silver at best.

 

[woolly]

Anyone have photos of the metallic coming off these? Considering the machine but have yet to see the metallic.

my advise would be do not buy on sales speak go and try it your self first...its an acquired taste and you must have a market for it

 

[jfiscus]

We have had our Epsons with metallic option for around 3-4 years and have not used it once.
You can insert a cleaning cartridge to cut down on ink costs when you're not using the metallic ink.
We do use the white ink frequently though.
Our most recent purchase was the 60600 (dual cmyk); we are going to stick with this setup from now on.