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There is no way to get vibrant colors out of a flatbed is there?

Banners Signs Etc.

Banners Signs Etc.

New Member
I've recently and painstakingly re-profiled our jeti 1224 6 color flatbed. After hours of sliding the thing back and forth to read the swatches and build the profile, I compared it with the previous profile in the gamut viewer and it is exactly the same size.

I then compared it to our roland eco-solv 4 color printer that is running 3rd party inks and the gamut is huge (like 2x as big) compared to the flatbed. We can hit just about any pantone color we want.

I understand that these are really just high production machines and I shouldn't complain...Blue is blue, red is red and amazingly grey is grey....but is it an ink thing? Like is UV ink just not very vibrant? Would raising my ink limits from reasonable to wasteful increase my gamut?

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
 
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gregwallace

New Member
We have a vutek. Running the lamps on post curing helps a little with color and ripping files with rendering intent set to absolute colimetric helps a little too. The colors are still disappointing though compared to solvent.
 
HulkSmash

HulkSmash

New Member
you're using an old flatbed. You're not going to get the same production quality out of it is it had years ago. Try turning your uv lamp shutters at a different angle.. it does help with a gloss level and might help punch the images a bit more.
 
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rturner381

New Member
Color matching?

I hope this does not sound dumb nor condescending. Are you saying XYZ file (for instance), printed on the JETi and the Roland produce different colors?
 
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CanuckSigns

Active Member
rturner381 said:
I hope this does not sound dumb nor condescending. Are you saying XYZ file (for instance), printed on the JETi and the Roland produce different colors?
Click to expand...

I would think so, you can print the same file on 2 identical rolands and there is no guarantee the colours will be the same!
 
Banners Signs Etc.

Banners Signs Etc.

New Member
Not to sound condescending myself, but yes they will look different if only because of the different ink chemistries...If you sent a pantone solid coated artwork to both printers they would look different. And the flatbed cannot print glossy.

It is funny how an old flatbed is 4 years old...

edit: I guess 5 years old now...I think it was number 6
 
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gregwallace

New Member
If its the actual gamut range that bothers you then you might try looking into different rip softwares. We use fiery and yellow has always been an issue. Damn program adds magenta and cyan to process yellow. But our colorburst rip doesnt. Your lamps can affect the pop of the color as well. Our curing options are single, double, and post. Post does better for color but doesnt cure quite as well. I guess we have an "old" printer as well. Even though its not paid off yet.
 
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Integrity Color

New Member
The color gamut is based primarily on two factors... the actual ink being used and the ink restrictions set in the RIP software. The inks I use in my Oce Arizona flatbed are capable of a far superior color gamut than any of my strong-solvent and eco-solvent printers. The same goes for the Mimaki flatbed printer I have.

Either you're restricting too much, or the inks you're using aren't very good.

I wouldn't recommend absolute colorimetric for digital printing unless you're proofing another device's output. I tend to prefer perceptual for images and saturation for vector-based artwork. Although perceptual will slightly compress your in-gamut colors to allow for appropriate relationships to out-of-gamut colors, you won't have any strange gradient issues at the edge of your gamut when all out-of-gamut colors get mapped to the same point on the edge of your gamut.

I know Triangle offers some 3rd party UV inks that have a decent color gamut; however, you'd have to do some research to see if they're compatible with your printer.
 
HulkSmash

HulkSmash

New Member
Banners Signs Etc. said:
Not to sound condescending myself, but yes they will look different if only because of the different ink chemistries...If you sent a pantone solid coated artwork to both printers they would look different. And the flatbed cannot print glossy.

It is funny how an old flatbed is 4 years old...

edit: I guess 5 years old now...I think it was number 6
Click to expand...

they may be labeled 07 but they're late 2005 models..

those jetis need to be ran 9 hrs a day for them to perform at an optimal level.
 
Typestries

Typestries

New Member
  1. What inks are you running? No vibrancy issues here at all with the nazdar inks.
When you profiled, what were your ink sliders set at on the jeti gui? We like to start at 200% on there. In jeti setup are you configured to the right size heads?
 
Banners Signs Etc.

Banners Signs Etc.

New Member
Hey Rick..We are running at 200 on sliders..getting ink from Digitech...bottle says URG Yellow USJET 1668...looks like it was produced by sun chemical.

Who do you buy your nazdar inks from?
 
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gregwallace

New Member
I dont believe the ouput will help as much as the timing of your lamps. What are the options you have for shutter or curing settings? The post I was talking about I believe heats the material prior to laying down the ink. This would affect dot gain a little bit similar to a solvent printer with preheaters.
 
Typestries

Typestries

New Member
Buying inks direct from Nazdar. You should be able to get good color. Did you check the jeti setup, that the head setting matches your installed heads (se/ sm) and are both banks of your heads firing properly? When we get weak color it's usually a gremlin changed the head type setting or a bank is out. How are your head voltages? Older heads may need a head voltage boost to get good coverage. Also is your color to color setting dialed in?

Has this machine run this way since day one?
 
Banners Signs Etc.

Banners Signs Etc.

New Member
how do you get to the setup again? I did boost the head voltage with magenta and that helped a lot..is there any danger to this? I have them on 110 would probably get even better at higher voltage, but don't want to burn them out.

A lot of the problem was me being a n00b to profiling with a new machine, and then working with new rip software. Now I feel like I've moved up to amateur.

Don't get me wrong with my newer profiles things are looking pretty good, maybe I am just trying to compare it to a solvent print. You know apples to oranges.

We do have a few nozzles mapped out too...like I said the price was right and the machine has never let us down, it just hasn't wowed us with some sort of imagined spectacular orgasm of color...at least at production mode 9 pass 300x600 lol


And with that I thank you all for the insightful responses and I am going home! Will check in tomorrow for sure!
 
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RyanFelty

New Member
I don't know if this will help because my machine is different but we had the same sort of problem. Sometimes I have to bump the saturation a little bit and make sure that both shutters aren't opening each pass. Alternate the shutters and it will create more of a gloss look and bump the saturation just a bit. We just had a long time customers complain that some prints looked washed out so I experimented for a day or two that's how I figured this out. Good Luck!
 
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