Just got my 1st white ink cartridge for the S80600

[tulsagraphics]

Hi all!

So I decided to give white ink a try.

One of my bigger clients needs decorative privacy graphics (white gradient pattern), and they have 180 offices (all narrow windows). They already have some done in one of their buildings that I will try to match -- seems pretty straight forward -- except that I've never printed white before.

It could be a really. nice job if I can land it. But for now, I need to at least see what kind of quality I can achieve with my S80600 + Caldera VisualRIP.

Do you all have any tips / suggestions with white on the S80600? Such as:
- How to configure white in the software (Illustrator + VisualRIP)
- How often to pull the cartridge out for a gentle stir
- Does the white ink need to be stirred even if it's not installed in the machine? (e.g., install white for a day, then switch back to the cleaning cartridge until the next job)
- anything else to be aware of?

Thanks!

 

[jharler]

I use Onyx, so I'm not going to be able to help with the RIP, but the s80600 will remind you daily to shake the white ink cartridge, so that's how often you should do it. To be honest though, I've let it sit over the weekend and printed white on Monday without shaking it and it was fine. You should shake every day that you can. The tech who installed mine also recommended shaking the orange as often as the white, so I just unlocked them both and shake both at the same time. If you remove the white ink cartridge (which I imagine would mean running a cleaning cartridge out), you're going to need to shake before installing it, but you're going to lose a ton of white ink switching back and forth. If you don't have consistent work for the white ink, it might be better to outsource this particular job.

 

[netsol]

mutoh, i think has you shake the new white cartridge for 5 minutes before installing

yellow and orange (no matter whose) has as much or more solids than a black cartridge

if you don't stay on top of this, the best you have to hope for is inconsistent color/density

 

[ProColorGraphics]

I have metallic in mine. Shaking it is easy: it will notify you daily to just pull it out, shake it and reinstall it. That is no big deal at all.

For illustrator, you just need to set a spot color called "white". I save out as pdf files and send the to Caldera. Caldera should recognize the spot colors right away. You will need to make a profile for white ink though.

 

[tulsagraphics]

Thanks for the info. I did find a few guides out there for working in Illustrator and attempted a few tests in Caldera.

I created a custom profile for it (I have a spectro), but wasn't sure how many passes to make. I just went with 16 for a quick test. Pure white is fine -- but the output (with color) sort of mutes the colors. It's certainly more opaque, which is good, but the vibrance is cut by at least 1/3. Should I up the number of passes? (not sure what those "2L" and "3L" specs are in the profile settings.

How many passes do you guys run if you're printing color on top of white?
I don't mind making another profile -- but for those of you who own an i1 Pro -- you know how much scanning swatches sucks. lol

 

[Vasilis]

We use the most of the time with white as a base for colors 24 passes and the most times it is fine but we have some jobs that require 48 with double the amount of white ink.

 

[tulsagraphics]

Update: I was able to get really good white for this job. My customer and I are very happy with the results -- but holy crap, white is way more expensive than I thought -- more than just "cost per liter". The ink gets depleted soooo fast.

This morning I ran the numbers: (1) 600ml cartridge = 121 sq.ft. of white. So we're looking at about $2/sq.ft. for that white base layer (at 100% coverage)

Just a heads up in case you haven't run into this before:
I was able to complete the job with 1 cartridge, but I did have a few things that I wanted to reprint -- during which I ran out of ink. Okay, not a huge deal (the first prints were still mostly acceptable)... until I realized the printer will not let you switch back to "regular" print mode if you run out of white. So my printer is down until I get another white cartridge in there. Damn it! I don't need more white. Arrr! Lesson learned. lol