Printing a true black to white gradient on a JV33

[kotagraphics]

Hey Folks
I have recently switched to a JV33 from a JV3 and i have a trailer wrap job that requires a black to white gradient that isn't bluish or brownish in the middle.
I have tried a bunch of different profiles and color combos from straight black in the CMYK setup to true black 63% 52% 51% 100% all with the same result

I am printing with Wasatch Softrip on arlon 6000 and i cannot do a bunch of messing with color transforms in wasatch because i also need to hit Harley Davidson Orange in the file as well so cheating isn't an option

any ideas suggestions are greatly appreciated
Thanks
Scott

 

[Letterbox Mike]

Try making your black 100% k, 0% everything else and then telling turning off color correction in the rip. Works for us with our JV3 and Onyx...

 

[cptcorn]

build your own profile

 

[Rooster]

build your own profile

X2

 

[kotagraphics]

--- cptcorn---Unfortunately we use "canned" profiles and aren't quite to the level of building our own profiles ... if i had a sniff or the time i would make my own but no such luck.

---insignia--- i have tried the 100% black and 0% everything else but cannot seem to find anything to turn off color correction in Wasatch plus i need to be able to still print nice rich colors (orange and blue)
If it was just a black and white image i would just change the color settings in wasatch to dump everything but the black

we actually just switched to wasatch from Flexi when we got the JV33 (2 wks ago) so i am unfortunately still learnin Wasatch as well

 

[bbeens]

Kotagraphics-

Sounds like you are a bit trapped. If you must maintain color accuracy for the Harley Davidson Orange but are seeing ugly gradients - I doubt this will be possible without a measuring device (eyeone, dtp70, etc). Maybe that is an overstatement. Point is, you need to correct for an inaccurate linearization without throwing off the Orange. At best this will take either extremely good luck or several test iterations of adjusting correction curves then rinse and repeat. I do not recommend this, I would hit up your dealer for a custom profile or hire someone to build it.

I know Wasatch does not have a profile for the media you are running, you may want to contact Arlon to inquire if they have built any.

If you decide to turn knobs and pray, I would recommend converting the orange element to be a different input space than the gradient, ie cmyk vector for the gradient and cmyk raster for the orange. This way you can tweak the gradient elements without affecting the spot orange elements. This will be very difficult if the two elements need to blend together nicely.

Let me know how it turns out.

Bryan-

 

[gabagoo]

question for me is if you ran flexi before...could you actually do a black to white? I have Flexi and cant do it either, so I tell customers simply, take it or leave it as I do not have the patience or energy to spend countless hours anymore dealing with it you might say.

 

[cptcorn]

If anyone is willing to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for a machine, wouldn't you want to either...

A.) spend a fraction to get your printer printing perfectly, and learning how, with the proper tools... Try building a house without a hammer...

B.) Spend a fraction and hire someone to come out and profile your medias in house, and ditch canned profiles that dont take in account your specific environment...

C.) Throw your investment into a printer away by crossing your fingers and hoping for the best results?

Easily within in one year the cost of the equipment and time to learn it has been saved just in the reduction of layed ink... to each their own!

You wanna do your job right or half arsed is what it comes down to... I know what I'm picking...

 

[kotagraphics]

Thanks for the feedback guys
---cptcorn--- in a perfect world that would be the case (or if it was my shop) but unfortunately i am a printer operator that doesn't call those shots (my job is to make it work... to make it brief) I have to this point been able to greatly improve the quality of product leaving our shop and rarely have a problem i cannot figure out (until now). It may now always be the best way of doing things but like i said i make it work without sacrificing quality

---gabagoo--- I was able to make it work with flexi and print fairly nice black and whites by messing with linearizations , contrast and color levels in the production mgr. I believe the profile i was using was an Ultramark profile too.

thx Scott

 

[cptcorn]

Thanks for the feedback guys
---cptcorn--- in a perfect world that would be the case (or if it was my shop) but unfortunately i am a printer operator that doesn't call those shots (my job is to make it work... to make it brief) I have to this point been able to greatly improve the quality of product leaving our shop and rarely have a problem i cannot figure out (until now). It may now always be the best way of doing things but like i said i make it work without sacrificing quality

I don't mean to come off as an ass, it's not my intention...

I was and am in the same boat you are... The owners thought everything was running 'fine' and quality was great... Until I started hearing why some of the jobs we were losing in the past (before i was there) and it specifically came down to colors not looking right, specifically matching spot colors, and greens or reds in grays...

I researched the hell out of profiling yourself, or hiring someone to. I proposed it to the owners and they thought i was nuts. They lost a $150k account because a gray spot color came out with a slight green. Got them to invest the $2500 or so, I learned the process pretty quickly... Showed a before and after, and their heads exploded. I was even impressed... and we were using 75% less ink... go figure... its a no lose situation...

It wont bring work in, but it will defiantly keep work there... All while making up their investment by saving ink... go figure. Like I said, I'm in the same spot you are... Came to a shop that knew nothing, increased quality a ton on the technical side... and then proposed a better increase after a failure... and then blew the quality out of the water... I haven't had to touch the feed adjust on our JV3 for months, Banding?! not even a second though... its of the past... I just hit print now... no samples

 

[gabagoo]

If anyone is willing to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for a machine, wouldn't you want to either...

A.) spend a fraction to get your printer printing perfectly, and learning how, with the proper tools... Try building a house without a hammer...

B.) Spend a fraction and hire someone to come out and profile your medias in house, and ditch canned profiles that dont take in account your specific environment...

C.) Throw your investment into a printer away by crossing your fingers and hoping for the best results?

Easily within in one year the cost of the equipment and time to learn it has been saved just in the reduction of layed ink... to each their own!

You wanna do your job right or half arsed is what it comes down to... I know what I'm picking...

I guess it depends on what you have to do to get projects out. I pretty well run all my own equipment, and honestly I may learn slowly overtime, but with taking care of getting orders, processing them and dealing with employees and what they need to do, I just have no time to sit down and really learn what this machine is capable of. It gets me by for the most part and we are somewhat steady to busy for the most part. Maybe one day if I ever get to the point where I can hire someone to run the printer then I will make it their perogative to be able to do it all I suppose.

 

[ColesCreations]

Just a shot in the dark, but...

If you are able to print the gradient, then how about printing it first, then printing the orange and whatever else needs color correction afterwards? (Of course removing the areas you don't want to print)

Keep an outline or something around the graphic to make sure the files are exactly the same size, and start the print in exactly the same spot, by making a mark.

Not exactly something to do for a series of jobs, but should work for a one-off.

 

[modern]

Assuming you are printing from a vector file, in the future you may try rasterizing the gradient portion, or the whole file, and see if that works. I'd probably do a 10% size test first to save RIP time, and test it with the different profiles you have. The reason this might work is that profiles do color correction differently for raster vs. vector, and also RGB vs. CMYK.

Regarding the decision to profile, we do our own profiles in-house, but there always comes the time when you are printing on a new media (or the customer's media) and you don't have the time or inclination to spend the 2 hours or so to make a good profile. So there is always going to be a time when you just need to figure out a way to get the job out the door.