Forced into low ink densities on the L360

[dypinc]

Did a little test at 4 pass. Both Film settings and the middle Textile produced the same washed out look on Banner material that PVC Banner does. It is a real shame that 4 pass is not usable unless you don't want bright saturated colors.

 

[P Wagner]

Did a little test at 4 pass. Both Film settings and the middle Textile produced the same washed out look on Banner material that PVC Banner does. It is a real shame that 4 pass is not usable unless you don't want bright saturated colors.

4 pass printing, while quite fast (345 sfph on the Latex 360), is not able to adequately dry the volume of ink needed to generate bright saturated mid-tone colors. It becomes a question of priorities, and fast printing is generally at odds with superior gamut output on most printers, including HP Latex.

Higher pass counts on the Latex 360 machine will tend to correlate to larger gamuts, albeit at lower throughput.

 

[dypinc]

But I would like to able to see where that limit to adequately dry a specific volume of ink is.

 

[P Wagner]

But I would like to able to see where that limit to adequately dry a specific volume of ink is.

Here (attached) is a chart chat shows what ink densities are available at various pass counts on the HP Latex 300 series, and cross references low-ink medias with comparable high-ink medias. This data was published on the HP Latex Knowledge Center.

 

[dypinc]

Here (attached) is a chart chat shows what ink densities are available at various pass counts on the HP Latex 300 series, and cross references low-ink medias with comparable high-ink medias. This data was published on the HP Latex Knowledge Center.

What I meant was, I want to see on the media when I have gone too far or laying too much ink down. As it is with 8, 10 or 12 pass (unless I use the backlit settings at 12 pass) I can not see that as the media will likely take more than what the 300 series will give. The ink limits are set too low to be able to find out on the media what the limits truly could be.

 

[AF]

Those ink limits are significantly lower than the optimal ink limits on the 200 series printers with 792 series ink. The ink limits are also lower than HP media profile limits for those materials for the 200 series. Maybe the optimizer causes problems at normal ink limits so they had to reduce how much ink is laid down. Perhaps the ink + optimizer limit is close to the media limit. Or possibly some person at HP just set the limits arbitrarily low.

Having made countless profiles on all grades of adhesive vinyl, I have found the HP vinyl to hold the least amount of ink while premium vinyls will easily hold over 50% more and have much better color. If HP is using their mediia as the baseline for the hard-coded ink limits, then the low limits in that chart start to make sense.

if you turn off the optimizer, do the ink limits go up?

 

[dypinc]

if you turn off the optimizer, do the ink limits go up?

That might be hard to tell, but I have to try it especially with 8 or 6 pass banner.

 

[dan1942]

I am heading to the HP training facility next week I am curious what they say about this. Dont know if I like being in a nanny mode permanently (looking at purchasing L360 this month)

 

[AF]

HP's response to people complaining about the lack of ink limit control on the 300 series printers:

http://h20435.www2.hp.com/t5/HP-Latex-Blog/HP-Latex-300-Printer-series-Ink-Density/ba-p/94788

The workarounds are not ideal, so hopefully they will open up the ability to control the printer properly in a future firmware patch. Nanny-mode should not be the only mode on a professional printer. If they are hell-bent on having the nanny-mode, then also have an advanced-mode that is like the prior generations so color professionals can get the most out of the new printers.

 

[dypinc]

if you turn off the optimizer, do the ink limits go up?

Had a little bit of banner vinyl left on the roll so I thought I would test this.

6p_CMYK Ink Density set at 100%. Yes it does lay down more CMYK, but an optimizer setting of 0 is not an option, too much ink coalescing going on.

 

[AF]

Permanent nanny-mode is confirmed. The printer is intended for novices, and professionals were not considered. From an HP representative:

This is because the printer was intended to help as much as possible the new HP Latex users, which probably have less or even none experience with color calibration. For this reason the printer, although the limitations, is able to create profiles in an easy and fast way, which are good enough quality to print.

I hope HP is working to resolve this issue in and near-future firmware update. Of course, RIP drivers may also need to be updated. Otherwise the 300 series would be the ultimate roll printer.

 

[dypinc]

I think I should clarify some things here. Some of what I was experiencing initially was poor quality profiles (at least if your looking for maximum gamut) created from Caldera and Onyx. Once I had drivers for the Fiery XF and used FCP and had time to do a lot of testing I found in most instances 120% Ink Density provided just as much gamut as 200% Ink Density. Even when the media would support that much Ink Density you could see that output was more milky flatter looking. Now that is not to say that banner media for instance couldn't use a 120% Ink Density setting at 8 to 2 pass.

What I didn't do at the time I had the Caldera and Onyx demos was to create profiles with better profiling creation software and use those in Caldera or Onyx to see if I could get high gamut and get better Spot matches especially reds. I suspect now that would have been the case.