Printing 1000's of decals at one time.

[IsItFasst]

This maybe a newbie question but I rarely have to print a lot of tiny decals at one time. The problem I am having is the program is crashing once I get to about 50-100 files when duplicating. I've tried making the image smaller but that just makes it look horrible. I've tried grouping 50 or so and duplicating with the program crashing. I'm using flexi 8 and on a fairly new computer so I don't think that is the issue. Am I missing something or can I only print a 100 or so at a time?

 

[mikey-Oh]

How big are these decals? Do they contain only vector artwork? Are they a mix of raster and vector? How complex are the contour cuts?

 

[iSign]

in flexi, if you had a 1" decal for example, and wish to print on 30" media, you can print only 28" - 29" worth of space, and after allowing up to 1/8" of space, you could lose another 3", so maybe 25 repeats is the right amount to make a "row"

I always do enough repeats to make a row in Flexi, and then I click the "rip & print' icon & set up additional repeats there. This is far less taxing on your software & hardware...

also, if you have contour cuts, it doesn't take a lot of misalignment to foul up small decal, so i like to keep my cut files around 3 to 6 feet in length. If you leave the file open in the rip & print window, you can advance the media after each 4 feet, or even cut it off, and then print another 4 feet without ripping again

 

[bayshorecreations]

in flexi, if you had a 1" decal for example, and wish to print on 30" media, you can print only 28" - 29" worth of space, and after allowing up to 1/8" of space, you could lose another 3", so maybe 25 repeats is the right amount to make a "row"

I always do enough repeats to make a row in Flexi, and then I click the "rip & print' icon & set up additional repeats there. This is far less taxing on your software & hardware...

also, if you have contour cuts, it doesn't take a lot of misalignment to foul up small decal, so i like to keep my cut files around 3 to 6 feet in length. If you leave the file open in the rip & print window, you can advance the media after each 4 feet, or even cut it off, and then print another 4 feet without ripping again

 

[ova]

We use Versa Works as our rip. It only allows for a 250 count of any object being print/cut.

We make our own labels for the awards side of the business. Send one label to Versa and run the count up to 250. These labels are 1"x1.5".

As Doug said, after this batch is done, we just hit the go button again print off another 250.

Dave

 

[Pat Whatley]

Have you tried using STEP AND REPEAT instead of duplicating?

 

[SightLine]

iSign has it right. Step and Repeat within the main Flexi interfeace is fine for setting up a perfect row or group but it will always be better to make one row or even just one decal and then use the rip and print window to set the quantity to print multiples of the row decal. The reason is every single peice in the main Flexi window has to be processed, displayed, and ripped.

For example - if you have just a single decal and you select rip and print and set the quantity to several hundred or even several thousand - flexi only has to process and rip one decal. If you make a giant group of the hundreds of same decal in flexi then choose rip and print then flexi has to process and rip hundreds of decals. Hope this makes some sense....

 

[IsItFasst]

Thanks Pat and Sightline! I knew there had to be a way so it didn't have to rip ever file. Works just as needed.

 

[IsItFasst]

I originally do as iSign said but this file was just not working. It was a jpeg image that was shrunk down to about a 1/4 of an inch (oval mask). So a line would fit about 55 across. If I tried to duplicate that line it would crash the software.

Using the step/repeat method I was able to get 5 lines. Then just send and hold to the production manager. Once a row of 5 is done, just resent without having to rip everything again. Not too much of a hassle but would have liked to done more at once. I tried to go to 10 lines but it was crashing. Oh well, at least I got it done the right way. Thanks to every ones help.

 

[evie]

I'm on flexi 8.1, doing 15000 stickers right now 4"x6", I do 150 at a time on 41" media (15 rows of 10). No problems with crashing, or cutting, just prints too slow. When I have problems with flexi and production manager crashing, I shut everything down for 5 minutes, and start again. Usually fixes the problem.

 

[RJ California]

At 15,000 seems like outsourcing would make more sense.

 

[iSign]

I originally do as iSign said but this file was just not working. It was a jpeg image that was shrunk down to about a 1/4 of an inch (oval mask). So a line would fit about 55 across. If I tried to duplicate that line it would crash the software.

Using the step/repeat method I was able to get 5 lines. Then just send and hold to the production manager. Once a row of 5 is done, just resent without having to rip everything again. Not too much of a hassle but would have liked to done more at once. I tried to go to 10 lines but it was crashing. Oh well, at least I got it done the right way. Thanks to every ones help.

beware of masking... sometimes 10K worth of data has 2K worth in the middle that you want... if you mask it, you can isolate the 2K, only see the 2K, and even nest groups closely together, but I've found in some programs, like omega back in 1.56 days 9and maybe still.. I don't know) that the masked image would still be 10K.. so 500% more resources being sucked up

 

[Trimline20]

If a detailed bitmap image is reduced down to 1/4", are you also reducing the ppi to a reasonable level before ripping? If the resolution remains too high, I doubt if Flexi PM can assign a proper ink dot pattern to print an image so small. I think that PM will need to discard some data and perhaps this is contributing to Production Manager's crashing issues. You might also try raising the print quality to see if you can increase the number of prints.

 

[mark galoob]

If you shrunk the image a lot you may need to turn it to a btmap at 300dpi and re set for contour cut. I've crashed flexi by shrinking a leg btmap image then trying to play w it like that.


Mark galoob

 

[gabagoo]

I had to do 12,000 1" x 1.5" decals last week and I just send one to the rip and then multiply up in there. I ran about a 1000 at a time, not because I felt the program would crash., more so because I dont think my Summa cutter will track to much farther than about 80" safely. Always best to break down large runs into smaller sections, just in case something goes wrong.