What speed(s) do you actually run your Colorado’s at?

[iPrintStuff]

So we’ve had a Colorado 1640 for about 2 years and are looking to add the 1650 alongside it.

For the most part, most jobs have been run on the high quality setting as it still uses the auto nozzle optimisation and the AAC marks. Needs very little user intervention and I can just wander off and not have to worry.

I’ve always felt we don’t make the use of the speed(s) available to us and with the 1650 I’ll have a plethora of new profiles to make. Wondering what you all actually use in the real world for the 1640 and 50?

The only things we tend to run on production are posters and health and safety signage, I don’t think I’ve ever been happy sending a customer something that’s been printed on high/max speed on the 1640 BUT I’ve seen for the 1650 they added an option that’s just “speed”. Hoping that’s a nice middle man between the gamut available at production but the speed of high/max speed.

Any advice on what profiles to start at would be great. I take it the output for the gloss on the 1640 is the same as the 1650? So in theory, to start off we’ll only need to make matt profiles for the 1650 and run any gloss prints on the 1640?

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

We use Max Speed, Production, Quality, and High Quality mainly in gloss. In Matte, we use quality.

For the day-to-day stuff, we use quality with the marks.

 

[Snydo]

I prefer High Quality, ran a big job once on production speed and it had some banding and ended up having to reprint a good chunk of it. Not to mention 75 minutes a roll on high quality is fast enough for me, I'm too old to be changing out rolls every 30 minutes.

 

[iPrintStuff]

So pretty much same again? High quality for gloss and quality for matt? I do remember initially the firmware was better for the 1650 than the 1640 so it done *better* calibrations. The 1640 started off where it would only calibrate on reliance mode and “guess” the rest where now it does a sample of every mode.

Second the production mode issue, haven’t ever quite managed to get it perfect where we’re happy with no banding. It’ll run a giant chunk fine then it starts banding then goes fine again. Usually it’s just health and safety site signage so it doesn’t matter but it would be nice to utilise the print speeds they show off about lol

High speed and max speed are probably just there for b/w prints on banner lol

 

[Pauly]

It really depends on the job.
We mostly run it at Matte speed.

 

[iPrintStuff]

It really depends on the job.
We mostly run it at Matte speed.

I remember speed was a big issue for you. Do you get a good enough speed/gamut with that setting? With minimal/no banding?

 

[Pauly]

I remember speed was a big issue for you. Do you get a good enough speed/gamut with that setting? With minimal/no banding?

No banding, although i run it in "robust" print pattern which is ever so slightly slower i believe. I got some zebra banding in normal mode.
Gamut is good. more than happy with it.
We average 1000-1500SQM a week, depending the media width we run.
It's already at capacity and we've had it for just over a month now. I don't think i'd go for a 2nd one though. Im looking at something bigger & faster and have the colorado on the side for other work.