EPSON SURECOLOR 80600 METALLIC PRINTING

[Jonathan Castillo]

Good Morning,

I purchased the Epson S 80600 this week, i run everything thru flexi, i have had the flexi tech support trying to help me with printing metallic, i have the epson techs, the company i purchased the machine working on it and NO ONE seems to be able to help me print metallic,
Wondering if anyone has been able to produce metallic colors and how it looks. any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

[unclebun]

I have no idea how to do it in Flexi, but to print metallic colors requires you to print in layers. You have to put down an underlayer of metallic silver, have the printer roll back (and wait a drying time) and then lay color on top of the metallic.

Although when I saw the S70670 demoed, they were printing color swatches of metallic colors to show this capability, in over 6 years of use I have neither found a need for this ability, nor been able to make metallic colors that I thought looked any good.

 

[jcskikus]

Again, as far as I was told from Epson and Flexi themselves, the S80600 isn't properly supported by Flexi and you are better off using the Onyx RIP that comes with the Epson. Also, when doing artwork in Flexi to be sent through the Onyx RIP, do NOT set up the cut line in Flexi but use Adobe Illustrator instead and renaming the color for the cut line "CutContour" or "ContourCut" (I can't recall which it is as it's been a year since using the Epson). As far as the metallic ink, I believe the Onyx RIP would be best as it's set up to use the metallic inks.

 

[SS7318]

Good Morning,

I purchased the Epson S 80600 this week, i run everything thru flexi, i have had the flexi tech support trying to help me with printing metallic, i have the epson techs, the company i purchased the machine working on it and NO ONE seems to be able to help me print metallic,
Wondering if anyone has been able to produce metallic colors and how it looks. any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

We've got the S80600 and i recently ran a bunch of metallic silver samples but we use ONYX. Here are some photos...

 

[Andriy]

Metallic is a spot, not sure about Flexi but both Onyx and Caldera support it.
No need to print one then go back, just requires quite a few passes.
So if you've printed white before, treat it the same.

That being said, the metallic is nothing special, you get way better results printing on chrome.

 

[yannb]

Good Morning,

I purchased the Epson S 80600 this week, i run everything thru flexi, i have had the flexi tech support trying to help me with printing metallic, i have the epson techs, the company i purchased the machine working on it and NO ONE seems to be able to help me print metallic,
Wondering if anyone has been able to produce metallic colors and how it looks. any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Hello, it is possible. Just select a 20 or 40 pass profile. 20 pass printing is for simultaneously printing color+metallic with both heads, aka 1 layer. This works fine for color and metallic side by side. 40 pass is when you first want to print a metallic layer with one head, and color on top with the other head. This is Layer 1 = metallic, Layer 2 = only colors. Nice for metallic color effects. Because of a bug in Production Manager 19 build 3260, you have to enter a metallic ink limit, otherwise it will print 0% metallic ink. You can look at the ink limit for cyan for instance, and use this or a little less for the metallic ink value. Save this setup as a preset, because every time you select another profile, the metallic ink value is set to zero again.
If there is no metallic spot color in your file, you can generate where metallic should be printed: under the whole image, only under valid pixels etc. If you have used a spot color, then map that color to the metallic ink channel.
I have reported this metallic ink level bug to SAi yesterday, so regularly check if there's an update that fixes this.

 

[greysquirrel]

First of all, your reseller should have installed the unit and taught you how to use it. If they did not, you need to contact Epson and let them know and they will have a field engineer not only assist you but they will make sure the reseller is re-instructed to prevent this in the future. I use Onyx and it has the ability to put a full flood behind, or on top of an image. If you want to use silver or white as a spot color, you need to indicate in your file where it should be used. Spot1 is what we call white or silver in Onyx. It may also work in Flexi. I personally hate the rip so I never really spent anytime wanting to learn it. For me its right up there with Coreldraw and trackball mouses...ugh Silver will run slow...Yannb has the correct info for you...but do yourself a favor, call Epson...if they know you are unhappy after an install they might even throw you some ink...