Thinking about an HP L360 and have a few questions...

[JERHEMI]

Thinking about an HP L360 and have a few questions...

1. The L310 and L330 are shipping with Flexi Cloud for a RIP, but the L360 isn't including a RIP. Why is that? Why don't they recommend Flexi Cloud for L360 as well?

2. One Supplier I got a quote from included Onyx Thrive 211 with the L360 what are your thoughts on that solution?

3. What RIP would you recommend that has a great balance of minimal learning curve with the best functionality? I am not interested in anything that operates on a Mac. I recently just got a kick butt Inferno PC from Casey at Signburst and want to put it to work!

4. The L360 has the big touch screen that has a lot of functionality, but I'm curious if you're able to accomplish all the same functionality from software on actual desktop computer and not have to use the touch screen on the printer?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[BIG EASY DOES IT]

Thinking about an HP L360 and have a few questions...

1. The L310 and L330 are shipping with Flexi Cloud for a RIP, but the L360 isn't including a RIP. Why is that? Why don't they recommend Flexi Cloud for L360 as well?

They are assuming if you are going with the highest model that maybe your not entry level and you already have a rip. They do recommend Flexi it is just not provided to you. If all you have is HP printers you might want to try Flexi11 Cloud HP version. It will do everything regular flexi does. Design, cut to any plotter, but it only will work to print for HP printers. A lot cheaper then full version.

2. One Supplier I got a quote from included Onyx Thrive 211 with the L360 what are your thoughts on that solution?

Another great choice if you have design software also. Onyx has great color correction though. With flexi you get a rip and design studio all in one.

3. What RIP would you recommend that has a great balance of minimal learning curve with the best functionality? I am not interested in anything that operates on a Mac. I recently just got a kick butt Inferno PC from Casey at Signburst and want to put it to work!

I would go with flexi. Very easy to learn. Also you get two softwares basically for the price of one. Onyx and Caldera and others you have to add on all these extras. Like print and cut, tiling, sizing, as extra mods. Flexi gives you all of it. They have a lot of instructional videos on how to do different things with the program that comes with Cloud.

4. The L360 has the big touch screen that has a lot of functionality, but I'm curious if you're able to accomplish all the same functionality from software on actual desktop computer and not have to use the touch screen on the printer?

Yes most stuff can be done from computer on the 310 and 330. This gives you the ability to change temps on the fly. Do your profiling from the printer. It's much easier. Plus with 360 you can double sided print, print on pourus flag material with the ink collector, and it is much faster then the other two models. It also comes with a spectrometer on board for color correction.

Thanks in advance for your help

 

[AF]

Onyx Thrive 211 is very basic and lacks, among other things, the ICC profile engine for creating profiles. Even though the HP printers have an i1 onboard, you would still need an external solution for profiling the plethora of materials that cannot be profiled with the onboard unit on the HP. If you only print on vinyl then 211 may be okay if you can live with all the other limitations. 211 is not terrible, but do some homework to know what it can cannot do. It gets expensive to upgrade any RIP piece-mail later on.

 

[JERHEMI]

Onyx Thrive 211 is very basic and lacks, among other things, the ICC profile engine for creating profiles. Even though the HP printers have an i1 onboard, you would still need an external solution for profiling the plethora of materials that cannot be profiled with the onboard unit on the HP. If you only print on vinyl then 211 may be okay if you can live with all the other limitations. 211 is not terrible, but do some homework to know what it can cannot do. It gets expensive to upgrade any RIP piece-mail later on.

What would you recommend then if I wanted to print on fabrics, print vehicle wraps with good tiling functionality, able to call out spot colors and print them accurately, etc.?

 

[Robert Gruner]

JERHEMI,

If you purchase L310 or L330, experiment with the Flexi RIP provided with printer. Then get demo packages from Onyx and Caldera and evaluate both. I believe you will find Onyx and Caldera both have a superior color engine than Flexi; but, users must make that determination.

I believe Easy's rsponse was spot on.

Good printing.

Bob Gruner

 

[dypinc]

For a top quality RIP I would take a serious look at ColorGate. Very easy to use and does not have settings scattered in different windows like Caldera and Onyx do. You can get a demo.

I have a demo here of Colorgate, that I have not tried (though I have used ColorGate in the past) yet. I was collecting demos to use when I had to get the L360 because I didn't want to put any more expense into an old L25500. My RIP did not yet have a driver for the L360 at the time, but I now have usable beta drivers. After using these demos it made me realize how easy jobs are to setup, with server, and client for each Mac or PC workstation and how color accurate the Fiery XF RIP is. Don't know if they have a demo or not, and the future 6.1 release will have full support for the L300 series printers.