when printer low on ink will not tell you the size?

[gabagoo]

There must be a way to figure this out. When the printer is low on ink it does not tell you how large a print area it thinks it has? I don't quite see the connection here. Is there a way to get that information from the digital readout? I could swear that after it measures the material it posts the results if for only a moment before telling me I am near empty on a cartridge, but I can' t seem to see it anymore. weird

 

[SignsOfMaine]

Gotta tell us what printer you're talking about?

So you figure it normally would be displaying the size (our roland shows the size in inches after you have everything set up)... but the low ink warning is overriding it and blocking it?

If it's a wide format printer that clamps stuff down with pinch rollers, you can physically measure the distance between the far left and far right roller.

Otherwise, our print output software has a "get media width" button you can click.

 

[gabagoo]

lol I did post it in the Mamki section, but it is a Mimaki jv3

 

[midnightmadman]

I heard you can change it in mid print if you need to. So just keep the cart. handy.

 

[rdm01]

That totally depends. if you were low on magenta, you would have plenty of
square feet left if all you were printing is cyan, but if it was solid black that
would be a whole different problem. The printer will tell you when it is out, and
just quickly swap another one in and continue printing, or at least on Roland
printers it works. If you have a huge job you could always change now, and
then just use that low cartridge on small jobs until it kicks the bucket.

 

[gabagoo]

whoowahhhhhhh!! Hold on there guys. Maybe I did not explain this correctly. When you load a new roll of material the head measures it so you know exactly what it is thinking it has and I can plug that into my production manager. When you are low on any particular ink cartridge, the low ink warning seems to over take the reading of how wide your material is. Normally I know what I have to work with, but when I print on reflective I like to nest my graphics in there to use as much as possible and not waste this $30/yard material.

 

[rdm01]

Oh, DUH!

Now that you say that I see what you are getting at. It's early over here!

I never even look at the printer readout because versaworks will tell you when
you hit the 'get material width' button. What RIP are you using, because I
know there are other rips that have similar features.

 

[thewood]

I understand you. You're using the Flexi RIP right? Our version of the Flexi RIP doesn't support the "poll size" feature that the plotter interface has. So, I also enter the media width manually. We run bulk inks, so I haven't encountered the "low ink" screen you're talking about. But I have seen this with a "replace wiper" message. When you load the media, instead of telling you the width on the printer screen, it just says "replace wiper". But I think if you press <ENTER> or <END> (can't remember which), it will remove the error message and tell you the media width.

 

[ColesCreations]

Ours does the same thing. Have not figured a way to get rid of it, but other problems include no cleaning during "near end", so don't leave town...

Best we have figured out, is to use a tape measure... It works pretty good, and is very reliable! (Make sure the printer has scanned the correct width by running a media compensation and see that it prints the whole width.)

Ours sometimes scans the wrong width. FlexiSign poll size has never worked for us, we always get comm error every time we try, and have to restart. It's no big deal to use the tape measure, we always have one by the printer.

Oh- And in relation to "near end"-messages, remember to pull out the cartridge, weigh it, and- if it weighs more than 430 grams, add 30 grams when putting it back in. That way you get to use up all the ink. If you wait untill empty, you will not be able to "add 30". It's about 8%, so at least $ 10 worth of ink each time you "add 30".