printing - amount of passes

[AnotherSignManiac]

I recently had a salesman come in from a vendor and we got to talking. I am currently printing on 4pass bidirectional. I knew that switching to unidirectional made the printer cleaner, but he said switching to 8 as well. Tried and it works really well. Now here are my questions. The salesman said that an 8pass uses less ink is this true? Is there any reason that I shouldn't print 4pass all of the time? Which setting will give best quality, and what setting uses the least amount of ink?

 

[Dice]

No clear cut answer for you on that, lots of factors, the main one being the rip and profile your using.

Generally speaking: Number of Passes, especially on the Mimaki is all about speed and quality. Greater the # of Passes the higher your quality mostly due to less banding. Increasing your number of passes decreases your speed, also depending on the printer and rip increasing the # of passes from 4 to 8 could double the amount of ink your putting on the print dependent on what profile your using. It depends on what the profile was created for.

Changing the number of passes different from what the profile was created for will dramatically change the color. You should notice a large color shift when changing the number of passes.

When you create a print profile you create it specifically for the number of passes. So we've created profiles for 4 and 8 pass for our Jv33. If your using generic profiles you need to make sure you use the number of passes it was created for.

 

[AnotherSignManiac]

oh interesting, I using a 3M profile, I haven't gotten into it beyond that. I have never noticed a color difference between 4 and 8 pass except on one print. But depending on the printers mood it would print normal and then an hour later the color changed dramatically... I guess I need to reinstall flexi (color profiles are corrupt) and then start messing with the passes and what not.

 

[SARTampaBay]

We've found that 720/720 8 pass is the sweet spot for our JV3. We'll print uni for small copy and tight registration. Most of our output is with these settings. For quick-turn banners we'll drop to 360/540, but only when speed is more important than quality. As for ink consumption, I asked our Mimaki tech that question years ago, and he told me there is no significant difference in ink consumption. I have no personal study to back that up, but he's been at it for 10 years or so, and we've always found his service and advice to be on target.

 

[AnotherSignManiac]

We've found that 720/720 8 pass is the sweet spot for our JV3. We'll print uni for small copy and tight registration. Most of our output is with these settings. For quick-turn banners we'll drop to 360/540, but only when speed is more important than quality. As for ink consumption, I asked our Mimaki tech that question years ago, and he told me there is no significant difference in ink consumption. I have no personal study to back that up, but he's been at it for 10 years or so, and we've always found his service and advice to be on target.

Good info! thank you, we always print on 720/720