Summa DC4sx print quality

[evanfoss]

Hi all,
We just got our new Summa DC4sx and it is a cool piece of equipment. However, I have been playing with the print quality settings and still cannot improve the CMYK or the CMY prints. We are primarily a sticker manufacturer and the bitmap images we use are small. I have even tried the double dot method and I get an error that the "image is too wide". The samples that summa sent us look pretty good and I would love to be at that quality. Any suggestions? Oh yeah, the spots work great!

 

[chopper]

I do not know much about the summa printer, I have a summa cutter they have life long support on their equipment I suggest you give them a call and they will help you through the set up you desire....
//chopper

 

[Fred Weiss]

While I don't have a Summa thermal printer, I have had a Gerber Edge for a number of years. What you must come to terms with is that thermal printing is done at relatively low resolutions and that the impression is much harder and exact than that of an inkjet, thus appearing harsher and the halftone dots more obvious.

The two primary ways of countering this are to start with images of a good enough quality not to compound the problem and to get familiar with the nature of the halftones and LPI settings available to you in printing the image. So low rez images captured off the internet will give you grief. You need to learn to ask for better ones ... they generally do exist and it's up to clients to supply them if they want good looking work. The old chestnut is very true that "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear". Some improvement can be achieved by choosing your halftone type wisely and upping the LPI settings to reduce dot size. The downside to that is higher LPI settings reduce tonal quality and things like banding will start to appear.

 

[2Piece]

Once you have your vinyl loaded in the Dc4sx, look at the control and see what it says the width is then adjust your artwork size. Example 24" wide vinyl usually reads as being 22.?" wide. This should fix your image to wide error. For CMYK set your lpi to 55 and shape to rhomboid. I find that CMY works great on most images unless there are "gray" (actual color) areas in the image then you need to use CMYK.
Hope this helps.

 

[evanfoss]

Thanks folks for your help. I have been messing around with the settings and have some success and some failure. I'm getting there, so thanks again for your help.

 

[PGSigns]

I print a lot of smaller decals on mine and have found that 35 lpi and double dot also works. You will get it worked out. Keep good notes and you will find settings that work good for somethings and crappy for others.
Jimmy