Vanguard Flatbeds VR5 & VK300 - consumable tracking?

[RDM]

I heard from Vanguard today that the only way to track consumables is for the operator to manually do it as they're running the jobs. That seems ridiculous.

The HP Latex machines, our old HP550 flatbed, and the Arizona one of our operators has used in the past all had easy access to some sort of interface that called out amount of ink used, amount of time it took to run jobs, etc.

Anyone have any easier solutions or work-arounds in consumable tracking for these two machines?

 

[signheremd]

Not sure on a Vanguard, but most of these printers have some similarities. On the FluidColor we run you can pull up the job logs and the info is in there. Might check that - job logs in the software that runs the computer that prints the files...

 

[bteifeld]

I would see if your RIP actually keeps track of this as part of production data. Ergosoft, Onyx, Caldera, and others may have this information for media and inks, at least.

 

[AGCharlotte]

I would say it depends on the RIP. I have 3 machines, one running Onyx, one running Rasterlink and one running Fiery XF. Raster and XF (actually the printer interface, not XF specifically) give me ink estimates before printing, Onyx does not but I can pull the usage log from the web interface of the machine after running a job.

 

[Zach Starr]

I heard from Vanguard today that the only way to track consumables is for the operator to manually do it as they're running the jobs. That seems ridiculous.

The HP Latex machines, our old HP550 flatbed, and the Arizona one of our operators has used in the past all had easy access to some sort of interface that called out amount of ink used, amount of time it took to run jobs, etc.

Anyone have any easier solutions or work-arounds in consumable tracking for these two machines?

Not sure on the printer you have. But the StratoJet Shark EFB I have, came with a maintenance checklist - which tells when the consumable part needs to be replaced. But there is also a datasheet in the Stratojet RIP software that tells us the amount of jobs run through it. Which helps calculating the square foot printed. So checking the RIP to collect the date would be a good solution.