Onyx Production House VS. Caldera

[Stephenedwardgraphic]

I know...this is a loaded question, kinda like Mac vs. Windows...but...I'm going to ask it anyway...

We are currently running Flexi (Mac version in our shop) It's time to move to a different RIP and I have been looking at Onyx Production House but my sales rep is trying to sell me on Caldera.

We have the following equipment
(2) Epson 9900
(1) Epson 9800
(1) Mutoh Falcon
(1) Graphtec FC7000-130
(1) Roland GX-24

We do alot of posters, canvas wraps, print/cut decals and a alot of decals that are on Oracal 631 and 651 vinyls (wall decals), and also t-shirt vinyls.

If you could choose your RIP all over again, what would you choose and why?

Thanks in advance!

 

[bigben]

I've tried both of them and finally went caldera.

 

[ForgeInc]

Caldera.

PSo a search.

 

[Bly]

Happy with Production House here.

 

[WYLDGFI]

have Caldera....like it a lot.

 

[Stephenedwardgraphic]

So between the two...which would you say is better at nesting graphics?

To give you an idea of our workflow -- each day orders come in for decals (we do lots of wall decals). Customers can choose which colors they want. So each day of production we go to our master files and build an Illustrator file and copy and paste the artwork from the master file into a new Illustrator file -- essentially nesting them all by hand. We then output to the Graphtech through our cutmaster software.

So what I'm looking to do is have all of these graphics in the rip -- be able to highlight all of the ones that go on a black vinyl - nest and cut, grab all of the ones that go on blue - nest and cut, etc etc...

Which RIP would be better at this?

We also do a good amount of print/contour cut. Is one easier to set up than the other?

 

[Bly]

To be honest I don't cut with Onyx.
It's a good rip but I find cutting smoother using Illustrator & Winplot to our Summa, print/cut included.
Horses for courses.

 

[zamajam]

The shop I work in used both ONYX and Caldera. We have recently gotten rid of ONYX and now use Caldera exclusively.

 

[neil_se]

Caldera has true shape nesting as an optional extra, it sounds like it'd save you a bundle of time and.materials.

 

[artbot]

i remember when i first started using onyx. i felt that i needed three separate monitors to control what i was used to seeing access to with one monitor with my old rip. compare that to caldera which lets one build a custom interface. i've used onyx 10PH and now i'm stuck with onyx 7 on a different printer. it's a disaster... but hey, you'll get used to it!