L360 Worth the Upgrade

[ProColorGraphics]

Hello.

For those of you who have upgraded from the L260 to the L360, do you think it is worth the upgrade? Would you recommend it to others? I am debating now on whether to upgrade mine and was just seeking out opinions from those who have done it.

Thanks for your input!

 

[P Wagner]

Hello.

For those of you who have upgraded from the L260 to the L360, do you think it is worth the upgrade? Would you recommend it to others? I am debating now on whether to upgrade mine and was just seeking out opinions from those who have done it.

Thanks for your input!

I would say that the primary motivation for this would be a desire for more throughput and production flexibility. The Latex L2 series has a long warmup time (~10 minutes) and this effectively forces the user to print multiple jobs at one time as a batch process. The L3 machine warmup is less than two minutes (90 seconds in most cases) and this gives the user a lot more flexibility and throughput. Also, speaking of speed, the L360 is roughly 2x the print speed of the L2 (this depends on the pass count chosen).

Other advances include the ability to easily and quickly profile many popular medias directly on the printer in less than 45 minutes, an improved machine UI (8 inch touch screen), removal of the print heater, and replacing it's purpose with Optimizer, etc. All in all, it is a major improvement in the user experience in my estimation.

 

[BIG EASY DOES IT]

I would say that the primary motivation for this would be a desire for more throughput and production flexibility. The Latex L2 series has a long warmup time (~10 minutes) and this effectively forces the user to print multiple jobs at one time as a batch process. The L3 machine warmup is less than two minutes (90 seconds in most cases) and this gives the user a lot more flexibility and throughput. Also, speaking of speed, the L360 is roughly 2x the print speed of the L2 (this depends on the pass count chosen).

Other advances include the ability to easily and quickly profile many popular medias directly on the printer in less than 45 minutes, an improved machine UI (8 inch touch screen), removal of the print heater, and replacing it's purpose with Optimizer, etc. All in all, it is a major improvement in the user experience in my estimation.

What they ^^^ said. It is more user friendly then the L260 that is for sure. I don't think the L260 came with ink collector platens either. So that's another bump for the L360. You can print porous flag materials with no backer on them.

 

[HulkSmash]

upgrade. My prints start instantly, and i get 135 sqft an hr.

 

[dypinc]

Hello.

For those of you who have upgraded from the L260 to the L360, do you think it is worth the upgrade? Would you recommend it to others? I am debating now on whether to upgrade mine and was just seeking out opinions from those who have done it.

Thanks for your input!

I upgraded from the L25500 because I didn't want to put anymore expense into the printer, and because of some of the new features of the L360.

However if you are a create your own color management guy be aware that you have a almost no control over the inks like you do with the L260. You have a very limited ink density range with 10 pass or lower. Also you have no control over light link curves if you need to control peppering to give the apperance of a smother higher resolution look.

RIP wise with the L360 I would stay away from Onyx because it seemed to want to have the printing on and not sleeping what setting up jobs in the RIP. And, when trying to set up jobs on different medias then what was loaded in the printer, Onyx it seems to not like that and made it more difficult then it should be, at least in comparison to other RIPs.

 

[Hotspur]

Can you explain the following a little more clearly?

"RIP wise with the L360 I would stay away from Onyx because it seemed to want to have the printing on and not sleeping what setting up jobs in the RIP. And, when trying to set up jobs on different medias then what was loaded in the printer, Onyx it seems to not like that and made it more difficult then it should be, at least in comparison to other RIPs.[/QUOTE]"

Onyx has identical integration as Caldera and very similar to SAI - all other rips have less automation.

I have all three rips and Onyx is the easiest to use once you learn how to operate its workflows.

Caldera and SAI are a little quicker to pick up but soon show limitations in their workflow.

The sleeping is set on the printer not the rip?

Setting up jobs for medias that are not on the printer happens automatically - open them up in an appropriate workflow and it does it without any intervention, or you can manually choose any media to print to per file with two clicks.

If you think this is "more difficult" than it should be then you need better training rather than blaming the rip or trying to put others off.

80% of all Latex 300s ship with Onyx in my market and there are no complaints. SAI is free yet people still buy Onyx.

Caldera has had problems with the L300s re nesting and a few other issues which exposes the little known fact that HP tests the L300s in their R&D with Onyx and SAI - not Caldera.

Onyx and the L300s are natural partners - you would do well to give it a good test.

 

[dypinc]

I think I gave Onyx a good try. This was Thrive with PDF files.

One thing I didn't like is that it would constantly wake the printer up. I found that really strange and annoying.

To setup a job for a media that was not selected in the printer, you had to go through a number of screens to find the correct media and settings you wanted to use. I supposed I could have learned more, work arounds/workflows for this. But after getting a lot of RIPing errors with no explanation of why, when the same exact files would RIP fine on Caldera or Fiery XF I just gave up as it was more trouble than I wanted to deal with.

When it came to color management I found Onyx to be way more complicated then necessary. I have often wondered why for years that there are so many request for profiles on this board from Onyx user, I now understand why.

In the last ten years I have used at least ten different RIPs. My two favorites are ColorGate and Fiery XF, and in my opinion Caldera, Onyx, and SAI Flexi don't come close in ease of use or speed of pushing jobs through.

You asked for a explanation, so here is just my opinion based of 25+ years of running filmsetters, platemakers, wide format inkjets, and digital presses.

You really sound like you have some investment in Onyx, do you?