Onyx sending data to printer speed

[Pauly]

So i've known about this for a while, but it never really bothered me until now as now im sending huge files to my printers. Full length rolls etc.

Our facility is equipped with a 10gigabit network setup. But my printers (Arizona & Colorado) only have gigabit ethernet.
But for some reason, onyx will only send ~100mpbs so either printer.

I have tested the cables, even hooked up my laptop to each port and i get full speed of 1gigabit to my laptop.

Anyone have any clues? or onyx is the issue?

 

[MikePro]

cat5 cable/ethernet card?

 

[Pauly]

cat5 cable/ethernet card?

Yep, Every cable is Cat6e
I can unplug any printer, hook up my laptop and drop a file to the RIP pc and get ~900mbps easily. (laptop is only gigabit) even 10gigabit card on the RIP

 

[MikePro]

maybe the printers' onboard ethernet card is your bottleneck?

 

[balstestrat]

Remember that if the printer has HDD and not SSD, you can max out the writing speed at that 100mbps. Its not straight disk write after all, goes through the network and another OS.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

Remember that if the printer has HDD and not SSD, you can max out the writing speed at that 100mbps. Its not straight disk write after all, goes through the network and another OS.

100mbps is only ~10 megabytes per second... hard discs have not been that slow for probably 25+ years.
That being said, we upgraded the HDD in our Arizona to a 10,000rpm WD Raptor drive and we get the same results as Pauly.
I think it's probably Windows XP being the bottleneck, and whilst it does have gigabit support probably can't keep up with the data flow.

 

[Zendavor Signs]

So i've known about this for a while, but it never really bothered me until now as now im sending huge files to my printers. Full length rolls etc.

Our facility is equipped with a 10gigabit network setup. But my printers (Arizona & Colorado) only have gigabit ethernet.
But for some reason, onyx will only send ~100mpbs so either printer.

I have tested the cables, even hooked up my laptop to each port and i get full speed of 1gigabit to my laptop.

Anyone have any clues? or onyx is the issue?

We have operated a number of different large format digital printers through Onyx over the last 20 years. Sending data to our Canon/Oce flatbed was always a million times slower than any other machine.

 

[Pauly]

Remember that if the printer has HDD and not SSD, you can max out the writing speed at that 100mbps. Its not straight disk write after all, goes through the network and another OS.

On both on the Colorado & Arizona there's a 1000Base-T / 1Gigabit port.
One runs win XP, other runs Win 10...

 

[jasonx]

How are the mounts setup to transfer from Onyx to the printers? SMB? NFS?

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

Onyx sends the data directly to the Arizona over port TCP port 9100 which is common for most network printers.
It doesn't transfer via a network share (SMB/NFS).

 

[balstestrat]

100mbps is only ~10 megabytes per second... hard discs have not been that slow for probably 25+ years.
That being said, we upgraded the HDD in our Arizona to a 10,000rpm WD Raptor drive and we get the same results as Pauly.
I think it's probably Windows XP being the bottleneck, and whilst it does have gigabit support probably can't keep up with the data flow.

My bad with the units... Just saying that it's just bottlenecking to transfer throught what ever system is there to recieve the data.

 

[Bly]

I really can't see the issue here. Unless your printers run faster than your file transfer speed there's not really a bottleneck.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

Just sent a few large files to our Canon 6000 and same issue... ~80Mbps average. I think it could be an Onyx thing rather than network. Every single device here is 1G, 2.5G or 10G.
Next job for the Epson I'll pay some more attention and report back.

 

[Pauly]

I really can't see the issue here. Unless your printers run faster than your file transfer speed there's not really a bottleneck.

It does slow me down for large jobs. For example I have x amount of images for 1 job which turns into about 40 rolls of paper. I have to sit there and man the RIP for 2 hours pressing send for each roll.

 

[Bly]

Is this to the Colorado? You can turn off layout preview and turn on automatically start printing then it will spool them all to the printer so they just sit there and you then just have to keep loading rolls until the job's done.

 

[Pauly]

Is this to the Colorado? You can turn off layout preview and turn on automatically start printing then it will spool them all to the printer so they just sit there and you then just have to keep loading rolls until the job's done.

Mostly Colorado but Arizona too.
Where’s the layout preview setting?
I haven’t seen that setting in years

 

[Bly]

Mostly Colorado but Arizona too.
Where’s the layout preview setting?
I haven’t seen that setting in years

There's a setting you have to edit in each media in Media Manager to turn it off.

 

[iPrintStuff]

Yeah especially for the Colorado there’s about 4 different ways to send every job. For multiple rolls etc of the same artwork I just send a tiny amount and in the layout preview set loads of copies. Even if the roll runs out it’ll count them for you.

Back in lockdown 1, for floor vinyls getting contour cut we made a specific sheet size on onyx (approx 1330x1300mm) artworks were 400mm. Turned off layout preview for floor vinyl, then turned on auto send when the sheet was 95% full. Just needed to drop an artwork in, put how many copies then once it was ripped onyx would split the job into sheets then send all the individual sheets to the Colorado (we also choose group jobs together in placement then put a 40mm offset as that’s the minimum our summa likes). That way was great but it means there was thousands of jobs sitting on the Colorado.

If it was a huge run of the same file, we turned off layout preview, set up one sheet (say 9 up on a sheet) then sent that one sheet “x” amount of times via the layout preview. That way you’re only ripping/sending one tiny file and the printer counts the copies so it doesn’t matter if the roll runs out. Then there’s only one small job sitting on the Colorado for potentially loads of rolls of media. Downside to that is the Colorado wants to finish that entire job before printing anything new. No pausing and doing an urgent job.

 

[Pauly]

Yeah especially for the Colorado there’s about 4 different ways to send every job. For multiple rolls etc of the same artwork I just send a tiny amount and in the layout preview set loads of copies. Even if the roll runs out it’ll count them for you.

Back in lockdown 1, for floor vinyls getting contour cut we made a specific sheet size on onyx (approx 1330x1300mm) artworks were 400mm. Turned off layout preview for floor vinyl, then turned on auto send when the sheet was 95% full. Just needed to drop an artwork in, put how many copies then once it was ripped onyx would split the job into sheets then send all the individual sheets to the Colorado (we also choose group jobs together in placement then put a 40mm offset as that’s the minimum our summa likes). That way was great but it means there was thousands of jobs sitting on the Colorado.

If it was a huge run of the same file, we turned off layout preview, set up one sheet (say 9 up on a sheet) then sent that one sheet “x” amount of times via the layout preview. That way you’re only ripping/sending one tiny file and the printer counts the copies so it doesn’t matter if the roll runs out. Then there’s only one small job sitting on the Colorado for potentially loads of rolls of media. Downside to that is the Colorado wants to finish that entire job before printing anything new. No pausing and doing an urgent job.

That's some handy info.

right now i just onyx how many of each file, then nests them for me. Even if i change it to single files with multiple copies, i'll end up going back to onyx nesting them when our fotoba comes.

But i did turn the layout preview off for specific media.

 

[iPrintStuff]

Yeah we had one job that was ~27 rolls of floor vinyl, sent it as one sheet of 9 vinyls and just put 1400 or something in the layout copies. All that work and it just appeared as one little job on the Colorado. (Plus very handy that the Colorado counts sheets this way so even if the roll runs out it knows how many you’ve done).

For our flexa, I tried this once with pretty decent success; we need the double cutter marks but we regularly get a timetable job that’s about 1500 posters worth. So for that I sent each file individually and only send them with single cutter marks, that way once a couple files get printed next to each other, it makes a double.

if you don’t like that method, what we were doing before was the double mark method but I made a custom “sheet” size in onyx that was 1067mm by 48m. It fits as many as it can into that size (a roll worth) and splits all the posters into separate rolls for you. (That might be how you’re doing it already) so you only need to hit “send” once for each roll worth. but the standard in onyx is a 50m roll and you can’t actually print on all 50m. We know we can reliably print on 48 so we chose that.