Gerber Edge II color registration issues

[arcman]

Hi,

I've had this equipment for a few years but never got around to printing more than one color. Doing a freebie for a friend. I rarely use this stuff and am willing to admit I'm a total beginner.

Graphic is perfect in Omega 5.0. Spot color output to printer is blue, yellow, red then black. Image is around 4"x5". I've printed up to five in a row and from the first to the last, all are off by a few thousandths. Looks like each color has a left shift.

Sprockets are clean, the Oracal white vinyl is a few years old and it does show a very small amount of shrinkage when looking at it with a magnifying glass (I'm guessing this could be the issue?). You'd think if it was shrinkage related, all colors would be effected the same. I do not have any kind of tensioner and the vinyl is loose and not being pulled off the roll.

Time for new vinyl? Is there any way to compensate for the color shift in Omega?

Thanks.

 

[Fred Weiss]

What is happening is that the top colors are knocking out the colors beneath them leaving a thin unprinted area. You can use the Chokes and Spreads feature of Composer to create overprints where the colors touch or you can convert all to a bitmap and print it with a high LPI setting.

 

[Billct2]

Yep, choke & spread, but it can take some experimenting to find the best settings. Also sometimes I have issues when doing more than a few colors in one print.

 

[arcman]

Thanks guys,

I erased all the stuff I originally included about using Choke/Spread because I thought maybe it came down to the vinyl shrinkage. I tried Choke/Spread with two colors first then three. Kinda opened up a can of worms. Odd... When I would pick red/black in 'Select' and then go into C/S, there would be two blacks. Same with red/yellow. Two yellows (same Gerber numbers). But there is only the four original colors.

When I selected red/black and used spread (.008"), it fattened up the black around the red and the crosshairs. Looked good. But where the black crosshair went thru the white, it got thin again. Didn't look good. Is there a way to select one color to 'grow' or spread? I'd like to select black and thicken it up a few thousandths.

This whole thing doesn't make sense why three colors are shifted from the first pass of blue. Is there any calibration routine for the printer?

Thanks again.

 

[Fred Weiss]

The position in which each color is laid down on the substrate is affected by the amount of foil left in the cartridge. It's a design flaw in the Edge. A four spot color job can be overwhelmingly confusing to correct. If you were printing with four brand new foils, you would have very little problem.

You can resort to doing each object individually by emulating what the choke and spread does. This is nothing more than one color being slightly offset (outlined) to "spread" over the underlying color or under the overlaying color and then set to top color to overprint.

If exact spot color matching is not required, you can always convert the entire image to a bitmap and print if in four color process. Because you will now be using percentage mixing of colors, there is no need for any chokes or spreads as where the colors touch there will simply be a percentage blending of the colors. You will, however, have to deal with the introduction of halftone dots. This can be minimized to the eye by setting the size of the halftones to a small size and the LPI (lines per inch) to a high number.

 

[Adam.Foster]

Hi,

I've had this equipment for a few years but never got around to printing more than one color. Doing a freebie for a friend. I rarely use this stuff and am willing to admit I'm a total beginner.

Graphic is perfect in Omega 5.0. Spot color output to printer is blue, yellow, red then black. Image is around 4"x5". I've printed up to five in a row and from the first to the last, all are off by a few thousandths. Looks like each color has a left shift.

Sprockets are clean, the Oracal white vinyl is a few years old and it does show a very small amount of shrinkage when looking at it with a magnifying glass (I'm guessing this could be the issue?). You'd think if it was shrinkage related, all colors would be effected the same. I do not have any kind of tensioner and the vinyl is loose and not being pulled off the roll.

Time for new vinyl? Is there any way to compensate for the color shift in Omega?

Thanks.

Vinyl can cause the print to print registration and is most noticeable when using paper-backed vinyl as the vinyl expands and contracts as the Edge prints on it with heat and pressure and movement. Omega has a ton of features built in to help with print to print registration. check out this video
GERBER EDGE color registration solutions

 

[Adam.Foster]

Omega 7 has new features that also help with this OMEGA 7.0 Persistent Foil Adjust demonstration

 

[WhiskeyDreamer]

I have been running Composer software for a long time now and I still don't fully understand how the Choke/Spread works with multi-color jobs. I've tried and it just never seems to turn out right for me. I tend to just create my own and use overprint to create the look I'm going for.

 

[arcman]

I managed to fix this issue. I selected areas of the red and blue that touched the black, created .005" 'Outlines' for those colors to grow them somewhat and deleted the original selections. I then selected the black areas, applied a .005" 'Outline' and then applied it as an 'Overlap'. The Overlap feature is only available in the GSPPlot portion of the program. Took me a while to find that. In the end... I think the Edge II is just not backing up to the proper spot on subsequent foils.

Here's what it looks like now. I didn't catch the black overlap in the stone and have since fixed that. Now I'm having a new problem with attempting to 'Perf Cut' these. I will create a new post about that.

 

[Strider]

We are having issues as we need to white back colors as we are printing over a clear medium. I am going to test the persistent foil feature. Fingers crossed.