What size type and line weight have you been able to hold using your Epson 9900? This is great news! Thank you for taking the time to share this info. It’s a lot less exposure and hazmat materials to deal with and this is stuff which is readily available and will be for the decades to come. I still send out for imagesetter film for some jobs- but this printer has replaced the bulk of what I sent out for and reduced my turnaround times by putting it in house, without needing any of the silver film, maintenance, or chemistry related to an imagesetter. Add that to the cost of the plate material and my raw material cost is at about 14.00 per 8.5x11 plate, down from 35.00. controlling the ‘spread’ of the ink as related to how it affects small line weights and teeny text.)Įven with this testing, frankly in the tiniest lines and type- you’ll see a little detail loss as compared to an imagesetter.īut for keeping most production in house, i think it really does the trick and my film costs are really low.Ī film that used to cost me 25.00 outsourced now costs me about 4.00 in house. using less ink to make the black field, and B. By tuning the droplet weight, you can make it so you’re A. (droplet weight is the picoliter size of a droplet that is fired out of the inkjet head- basically, how big is the spray per ‘dot’, or how much physical ‘ink’ is shooting out. Whichever droplet weight resists the burn through, you pick the step above it and you set the RIP and printer to work with that droplet weight. It will print a density scale that you can expose through- you print this scale, expose it to a sheet of polymer for 7 minutes (the longest you’d ever leave a sheet of material under the lights), and then wash the sheet out.
Accurip dpi setting software#
The one minor thing is, you’ll need to do a lot of testing with the printer and this ink in order to use it with the RIP, but the accurip software has a built in droplet test and some other good setup features. The system makes for a very cheap bulk ink conversion. This allows me to print with one channel without buying expensive ink sets or cartridges I just use refillable carts and a funnel does the trick. I also run their clear ‘lubricating fluid’ through all the channels except black. I have not found a better ink, even Blackmax is not as opaque (I have tested ‘test films’ of it and it’s not as good as this ink). It’s density is good, but the really fantastic property is that it appears to be a weak filter for UV light. The ink- It’s so good, and so opaque, if I run it on the normal mode, I get a film that is able to run for 7 minutes in my A&V unit, and not allow the plate to expose. I have had some fantastic results with this stuff and an Epson 9900- but you could use a smaller epson with the same printhead, the 7900 if you wanted. I just invert my art before sending to print (because the negative function covers the whole film with ink, not just the rectangle I designate).
Recently, I’ve been making use of an inkjet, RIP software, and a black that I get from a supplier of inkjet-mods.Īlthough a variety of RIP kits are out there, the simplest one I could find for the money was ACCURIP- It’s actually RIP software for screen-printers (we also do paper screenprinting), but has been working well for the purposes of negative style printing. Have you ditched polymer and use a laser engraver? If so, can you share your experiences? Then there is laser engraving on polymer and a variety of other substrates. I am wondering if there have been new technological developments in terms of using either high quality inkjet and laser printers for film output? Anyone use a Xante Impressia, Epson 1430 or 4900 with Blackmax, or ?
Accurip dpi setting how to#
What specific equipment is involved in using an imagesetter (other than RIP software, film and chemistry)? Is there solid documentation on how to set up and use? Although, the imagesetter is a bit of a mystery to me. I am interested in producing plates with small type and fine lines.Īnd as far as I can tell an imagesetter is still the best in terms of resolution and capability. I have read all of the posts on film for the last 7-8 years. I think it’s time to move my plate production in house, but I am finding it difficult to figure out the film side of plate making.