-
I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...
What res. do you print at?
- Thread starter WB
- Start date
gabagoo
New Member
I run exclusively 720 x 720 and mostly 4 pass bidirectional with high speed turned off. I find with 360 x 540 the colours are all wrong for me, but that would be the fact that I cant profile for myself so I rely on you know who's profiles which suck lol. I cant get profiles from Flexi as they only make them for the 60" and not the 54" (makes no sense but they dont work). I basically run ND's 3M 180 c profile and it works pretty good for most materials.
Letterbox Mike
New Member
most everything is 720x720 8-pass bidir highspeed or 4-pass bidir high speed, which prints extremely well on our JV33. For banners we run 540x720 4-pass bidir high-speed. For wraps on IJ180C it's 720x1440 8-pass bidir high speed. More or less the same for the JV3, except on the JV3 we run wraps at 16 pass instead of 8-pass (we don't print wraps on the JV3 anymore...).
Letterbox Mike
New Member
Isn't that heat set really low for calendered vinyls? My 180C profiles are 39/37 for the heat, but we run calendered anywhere from 45/45 up to 50/50 depending on what it is. Do you get any banding or ink adhesion issues? Not questioning you, I'm just surprised you can get good results with that profile all around, we tried a 180C profile and had horrible results on calendered vinyls...
Ken
New Member
Of course, it's all very specific to the media, profile, the machine, the intended out-put quality.
I am a versacam user..and I recently found that I can use a lower resolution..and get good quality prints ( without banding and drop-out) when I use that setting- but then also do an overprint.( X2) ..So, that means it's a little slower than single pass at low res..also uses more ink than single pass...BUT it is FASTER that a "standard" resolution.
And the results are acceptable.
Cheers!
Ken
Rule of thumb...the smaller the print...the higher the res..
I am a versacam user..and I recently found that I can use a lower resolution..and get good quality prints ( without banding and drop-out) when I use that setting- but then also do an overprint.( X2) ..So, that means it's a little slower than single pass at low res..also uses more ink than single pass...BUT it is FASTER that a "standard" resolution.
And the results are acceptable.
Cheers!
Ken
Rule of thumb...the smaller the print...the higher the res..
mark in tx
New Member
360x720 for the vast majority of banners, outdoor vinyl, etc...
720x720 for posters and sometimes for wrap vinyl if needed.
720x720 for posters and sometimes for wrap vinyl if needed.
gabagoo
New Member
The profile for 180 was created by my dealer who used to have an inside guy who did nothing but profiling for all the machines they sold. I run the heat at 43 / 38 adhesion seems ok. Not sure the difference between great adhesion and poor adhesion. I will try running it even hotter if it means a better print.
HaroldDesign
New Member
720x720. I have different profiles for the # of passes that varies job to job. I have never run anything Uni-directional.
genericname
New Member
After some experimenting with multiple print settings and custom profiles (not to mention non-stop prodding from the production manager to make it faster), we've found a home at 360x720 4-pass for just about everything. We had some minor banding issues with the 360x540 standard that was used before I got here, and using a minimum 720 for height with KF Diffusion gets rid of it entirely. Not to mention that 360x720 seems to be the same speed as 360x540, and at 4 passes, we're getting higher quality than 3, but faster than 6.
I keep out temperature for calendared vinyl really low too, around 38 pre and 33 post. Otherwise, we get a terrible transfer to our rollers which leave vertical bands in our banner material unless we do a thorough cleaning. The low temperature doesn't affect the quality of our prints in the least though.
I keep out temperature for calendared vinyl really low too, around 38 pre and 33 post. Otherwise, we get a terrible transfer to our rollers which leave vertical bands in our banner material unless we do a thorough cleaning. The low temperature doesn't affect the quality of our prints in the least though.
Last edited:
We usually run almost everything at 720x720 depending upon colors and print type. I find greys and reds are particularly susceptible to washing out at 360x540 and lower (mind you, if its just black then its all good).
I've found that I bounce between 3M 180-c and IJ3555 profiles as they seem to come out the best (mind you, I do have frequent trouble with greys and burgundy now and then, which just requires a bit of playing around to fix). I usually run 8 pass for wraps and other higher end prints and 4 pass for 3mil and 2.5 mil prints.
I've found that I bounce between 3M 180-c and IJ3555 profiles as they seem to come out the best (mind you, I do have frequent trouble with greys and burgundy now and then, which just requires a bit of playing around to fix). I usually run 8 pass for wraps and other higher end prints and 4 pass for 3mil and 2.5 mil prints.
Rooster
New Member
Depends what I'm printing. Banners will be 540x720 12 pass or 720x720 8 pass, unless I need to hit a really vibrant colour then I'll go to a higher resolution and number of passes to get more ink laid down.
For wraps its usually 720x1440 8 or 16 pass depending on the colors I need to hit.
Small stickers will get a higher number of passes for a smoother looking less grainy product. Usually 720x720 32 pass or even 1440x1440 32 pass if it has really small text or extremely fine detail.
Canvas will usually get 1440x1440 32 pass as the color depth is amazing with that much ink getting laid down. Unless the artwork isn't really vibrant or I'm doing a longer run of prints and the customer is looking to save a few bucks. Then I've gone as low as 720x540 6 pass and still had an acceptable result.
I usually do up about 3-4 different profiles for each media at different resolutions/number of passes. It gives me some extra options when there are tough colors to hit.
For wraps its usually 720x1440 8 or 16 pass depending on the colors I need to hit.
Small stickers will get a higher number of passes for a smoother looking less grainy product. Usually 720x720 32 pass or even 1440x1440 32 pass if it has really small text or extremely fine detail.
Canvas will usually get 1440x1440 32 pass as the color depth is amazing with that much ink getting laid down. Unless the artwork isn't really vibrant or I'm doing a longer run of prints and the customer is looking to save a few bucks. Then I've gone as low as 720x540 6 pass and still had an acceptable result.
I usually do up about 3-4 different profiles for each media at different resolutions/number of passes. It gives me some extra options when there are tough colors to hit.
DigitalBBQ
New Member
Printing giclee for art gallery and for a very high definition can be really mind blowing with that many pass! Along with high fidelity color such as 6 or 7 or 8 color mode for that matter. However, for everyday signage or banner printing etc. a 4 color mode with 4-6 pass using 10-20% ink density overlay will make your print look like an athlete on steroid. Plus if you using software to manage your enlargement or rescale with pixel management will put your image above average for clarity and don't have to hit that art gallery level for output.
DigitalBBQ
New Member
Most of people printing on large format printers may not take advantage of RIP software fuctionality fully as they should. Taking a pre-made profile as tweaking it most of the time can do the trick for many substrate without spend great deal of time and trial in profiling process.
(Think of rich people who do not own the jet plane, instead they join the Exclusive Jet Club instead of having their own pilot, air port, etc. Likewise, you may not need profiling software or hardware if you can tweak the existing profiles and adaptation to use with your new media)
Creating your own profile is no cake walk to do it correctly you will need to have Good Inks to start with, RIP Software that can understand the profile which you about to create, and the Profile Maker Software , and Profile Maker's hardware such as spectrometer and colorimeter, etc. And the substrate you want to profile.
There are schools or service calls just on this topic and most of the time, it is beyond the scope of the technicians which they only know the hardware and maintenance but not the digital color management in relate to printing and profiling.
For example, if you own JV3 or JV33 you will need the buy the Profile Maker Software and buy Spectrometer/Colorimeter to front with your profiling battle. And do countless of spot color metering to achieve the best results on each printing PASS set such as Uni-direction, Bi-direction, 4 Pass , 8 Pass, etc. Also dealing with density adjustment, color balance, color replacement when your inks doing funny dripping, and trail prints to acheive a set of good working profile for a particular media that you want to secure printing quality. If you using none-oem inks, the adjustment will seem to be endless and the consistancy of the ink is vital to result of your profile. (Inks do have elastic fluid mix properties when jet, and also have viscosity properties when drying, these are factors for your adjustment on your PASS type and PASS mode when profiling)
Once you have your profile correctly measured and satisfied, you can virtually print at maximum speed that you can pround of speed, and quality , everytime!
FlexiSign Pro, PhotoPrint Pro, Wasatch, and Onyx came built-in with Profile Maker function and can connect to the supported hardware so you can create your own profile using all in one software to achieve that, but be warn; it is not that easy! Tweaking the existing profile will give you the shortcut. Unless you have particular stubbon media that it need to be dealt with absolution.
Sorry for the late reply. Not having that much time left to go around the web.
Yes we do own a i1 pro and yes we make our own profiles. Actually Im profiling our Teckwin Teckstorm once again since we've changed inks to a better ones for rigids that have low adhesivity like acrylic, aluminium and so on (no primers or corona btw).
We do not own any eco-solvents ink printers.
Yes you can improve printed image quality if you know how to properly work with good profile making and rip softwares, but its not true that a good profile made in high settings at low speed will keep its printing quality when printing at high speed. Thats not true.
If you are talking about consistency print after print then you are right only if no one messes up with the rip settings or even if the batch of inks you have in stock don't go out of date.
We are a professional photografic laboratory. I'm speaking about true photografic paper with chemical baths not the so called "photo paper" used on pigmented ink printers on so on. Our market demands prints on new substrates like aluminium, acrilic, tiles etc with visual quality of true photografic paper. High demand that needs to be printed with UV inks and 6 to 8pl print heads.
Something that needs to be addressed is that you also need to profile your computer monitor. What you see on screen must be what comes out on every printer that you have on your lab. Ok ok, screens has got a backlighted image and paper or any other kind of substrate dont, but this is something that you eye train with experience.
