• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

Just got my 1st white ink cartridge for the S80600

tulsagraphics

New Member
Hi all!

So I decided to give white ink a try.

One of my bigger clients needs decorative privacy graphics (white gradient pattern), and they have 180 offices (all narrow windows). They already have some done in one of their buildings that I will try to match -- seems pretty straight forward -- except that I've never printed white before.

It could be a really. nice job if I can land it. But for now, I need to at least see what kind of quality I can achieve with my S80600 + Caldera VisualRIP.

Do you all have any tips / suggestions with white on the S80600? Such as:
- How to configure white in the software (Illustrator + VisualRIP)
- How often to pull the cartridge out for a gentle stir
- Does the white ink need to be stirred even if it's not installed in the machine? (e.g., install white for a day, then switch back to the cleaning cartridge until the next job)
- anything else to be aware of?

Thanks!
 

jharler

New Member
I use Onyx, so I'm not going to be able to help with the RIP, but the s80600 will remind you daily to shake the white ink cartridge, so that's how often you should do it. To be honest though, I've let it sit over the weekend and printed white on Monday without shaking it and it was fine. You should shake every day that you can. The tech who installed mine also recommended shaking the orange as often as the white, so I just unlocked them both and shake both at the same time. If you remove the white ink cartridge (which I imagine would mean running a cleaning cartridge out), you're going to need to shake before installing it, but you're going to lose a ton of white ink switching back and forth. If you don't have consistent work for the white ink, it might be better to outsource this particular job.
 

netsol

Premium Subscriber
mutoh, i think has you shake the new white cartridge for 5 minutes before installing

yellow and orange (no matter whose) has as much or more solids than a black cartridge

if you don't stay on top of this, the best you have to hope for is inconsistent color/density
 

ProColorGraphics

New Member
I have metallic in mine. Shaking it is easy: it will notify you daily to just pull it out, shake it and reinstall it. That is no big deal at all.

For illustrator, you just need to set a spot color called "white". I save out as pdf files and send the to Caldera. Caldera should recognize the spot colors right away. You will need to make a profile for white ink though.
 

tulsagraphics

New Member
Thanks for the info. I did find a few guides out there for working in Illustrator and attempted a few tests in Caldera.

I created a custom profile for it (I have a spectro), but wasn't sure how many passes to make. I just went with 16 for a quick test. Pure white is fine -- but the output (with color) sort of mutes the colors. It's certainly more opaque, which is good, but the vibrance is cut by at least 1/3. Should I up the number of passes? (not sure what those "2L" and "3L" specs are in the profile settings.

How many passes do you guys run if you're printing color on top of white?
I don't mind making another profile -- but for those of you who own an i1 Pro -- you know how much scanning swatches sucks. lol
 

Attachments

  • white-ink-tests.jpg
    white-ink-tests.jpg
    873.8 KB · Views: 39
  • caldera-wh.jpg
    caldera-wh.jpg
    325.7 KB · Views: 34
Last edited:

Vasilis

New Member
We use the most of the time with white as a base for colors 24 passes and the most times it is fine but we have some jobs that require 48 with double the amount of white ink.
 
Top