New to HP L360 and L26500

[ChaseVI]

Hello everyone, the company I work at recently purchased a latex 360 and we have had a L26500 for about a year now. I have little to no time on them as far as running them goes. Although I have worked with Onyx Thrive quite a bit with some of our other printers. So I am familiar with ripping, rotating etc.. The operator who runs these printers at our shop is under the assumption(which may be right idk) that it is necessary to rotate every other file when batching up a large run of prints, because he says that helps with color shifts?? Does anyone have this same problem or something similar going on? I feel like this is a waste of time with set up and then when it gets cut out its also a waste of time rotating files when there are large quantity's. There may be another thread about this I am not sure. I am just trying to help our production team be as efficient as possible. Any input will be very appreciated. Thanks

 

[astraios]

The operator who runs these printers at our shop is under the assumption(which may be right idk) that it is necessary to rotate every other file when batching up a large run of prints, because he says that helps with color shifts??

HP suggests that this is a good practice when printing tilted graphic, so the transitions between them will be most color accurate.

 

[iSign]

+1

 

[Bly]

You don't have to do it manually so won't effect your production workload.
Select the option in the rip and it flips every second panel in tiled jobs.

 

[danno]

From what I have seen, that is true with about every printer. Back in the scotchprint days, that was a necessity.

 

[P Wagner]

Hello everyone, the company I work at recently purchased a latex 360 and we have had a L26500 for about a year now. I have little to no time on them as far as running them goes. Although I have worked with Onyx Thrive quite a bit with some of our other printers. So I am familiar with ripping, rotating etc.. The operator who runs these printers at our shop is under the assumption(which may be right idk) that it is necessary to rotate every other file when batching up a large run of prints, because he says that helps with color shifts?? Does anyone have this same problem or something similar going on? I feel like this is a waste of time with set up and then when it gets cut out its also a waste of time rotating files when there are large quantity's. There may be another thread about this I am not sure. I am just trying to help our production team be as efficient as possible. Any input will be very appreciated. Thanks

I absolutely agree with this practice for tiled jobs, however, there is a setting in most RIPs (including all versions of Onyx) to do this automatically. For non-tiled jobs the issue is moot, and the RIP can nest jobs as it see's fit, or the operator can manually next via the Layout module of Onyx.

 

[DougWestwood]

batching - rotation of panels

" that it is necessary to rotate every other file when batching up a large run of prints, because he says that helps with color shifts"

Yes, this is a very helpful idea, especially when printing gradients, blues, greys, etc.
Your printer operator is absolutely correct. You could always print a bunch of non-rotated panels, and see the results, even in large quantities.

If the rotation is taking too long with ONYX , this can also be accomplished in the design phase, where each panel can be laid out head-to-head. This task is quick and easy in Illustrator.

Any experienced printer will know that, even on the same machine, same material, two minutes apart, there could be a color inconsistency. Nature of the equipment.

Good Luck!
- Doug/Vancouver

 

[HulkSmash]

It's a good practice. But the new L360 has an optimizer, so you shouldn't have if any very much color shift.

Also most good rips have options to do them in the rip, and should take just as long as not doing it..

 

[VinylLabs.com]

It's a good practice. But the new L360 has an optimizer, so you shouldn't have if any very much color shift.

Also most good rips have options to do them in the rip, and should take just as long as not doing it..

forgive me if I'm incorrect, but I thought the only use of the optimizer was to promote adherence at faster speeds?

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

And color balance/accuracy.