Printing a white box behind contour marks possible?

[DChorbowski]

I have a HP 700W Latex Printer and it can print white. I am trying to print white ink onto a dark purple vinyl. Print quality is great, but my graphtec plotter cant read the contour marks as there is not enough contrast between the black contour marks and the dark purple vinyl. Flexi gives me the option to put a colored margin around the marks, but when I pick white, it just assumes i mean clear because the only color options are in RGB or CYMK, not spot. Do I have any hope in getting flexi to cooperate?

 

[P Wagner]

The current version of Flexi (version 21) might have this functionality with your cutter. Open the Job Properties dialog > Labels and Marks Tab.

SAI/ Flexi 21 HP Edition + Latex 700W/ 800W printers + HP Latex Plus Cutters offer the ability to print white ink underneath registration marks and HP barcodes under the Labels and Marks screen > HP Barcode Options button - see attached screen grab (note area framed in red). This new capability enables easy print & cut operations on a wide range of non-white color vinyl and wallcoverings, metallic/ prismatic films, and clear films.

 

[Joe House]

That's Summa options. This is a plotter driver specific option. SAi is generally favorable to improving their product and a suggestion like this makes a lot of sense. However it won't happen in time to get your job done. You're going to have to work this out another way. Print some reg marks on white and place them over the marks on your print job is probably the easiest way that I can think of. Also, design your job so that high accuracy isn't an issue.

Paul, just FYI - here's the Graphtec option box:

Good Luck

 

[P Wagner]

Hi Joe,

Thank you for clarifying this. The functionality that I referenced is available with HP Latex Plus Cutters, but I was not aware if the capabilities have been also rolled out to other cutter brands. The Latex Plus Cutter barcode is not the same as Summa barcode formatting, so functionality may not be synonymous between the two - for example, OPOS Xtra is unique to the HP Plus Cutters.

 

[MikePro]

in a pinch, my workaround for registering cutter marks on colored stock vinyl is to put a piece of white/offwhite/yellow masking tape over it and trace the marks on top of it with a black/blue solvent pen. if it refuses to scan to the next mark, then connect the tabs you applied with a stretch of masking tape to give the photoeye a "white point" to scan across til it finds the mark you've drawn.

added tip, if hand-drawing: if you have trouble tracing the mark because the tape/vinyl isn't transparent enough.... draw over the marks with a pen by hand, and it "dents" the vinyl, which can then be seen when you apply tape/vinyl over it.

 

[Splash0321]

I’m just adding this just in case someone needs the answer in the future. When printing on dark substrates you can choose to print a white border around the registration marks in flexi.

When the print dialog box is open you go to the tab for cutter settings, there you’ll find settings for registration marks. When you click it you should see the option to print a border around the registration marks. Don’t choose pure white as the color of the border, use 245/245/245.

90% of our substrates are black so we figured this out from pure necessity.

 

[DChorbowski]

I’m just adding this just in case someone needs the answer in the future. When printing on dark substrates you can choose to print a white border around the registration marks in flexi.

When the print dialog box is open you go to the tab for cutter settings, there you’ll find settings for registration marks. When you click it you should see the option to print a border around the registration marks. Don’t choose pure white as the color of the border, use 245/245/245.

90% of our substrates are black so we figured this out from pure necessity.

Ill give this a shot, but I don't think it will work with our HP 700w Latex. The only way to get white to print VIA flexi thru using a specific spot white.
We are now running the current version 22.0.1 of Flexi and they still have not added an option other than CYMK and RGB for the crop mark border color.

 

[mim]

If you don't have flexi and can't be bothered to figure it out on your program of choice (like me) you can always cut away the vinyl around the registration marks or put some white translucent over it and use sharpie on top

 

[ToTo]

If flexi doesn’t support it, why not drawing the crop marks in illustrator to be printed with spot and used as cropmark in your cutting workflow?

 

[bob]

Lacking the ability to print white, on those occasions when I'm printing and contour cutting non-white vinyl I register the leading edge of the media in the printer at some known point. Then I print just the registration marks in black and the outline of their bounding rectangle in barely visible gray. I have a stack of ~2"X2" round cornered rectangles cut from white vinyl. I place one of the white rectangles over each of the black registration marks on the media while it's in the printer. Then back up the media so the leading edge is positioned at the same place it was when I printed the black registration marks. The I print the entire image including registration marks. The end result is the print to be contour cut with perfectly readable registration marks. The is one of those things that's far more complicated to describe that it is to do and it has never failed.

 

[Splash0321]

Ill give this a shot, but I don't think it will work with our HP 700w Latex. The only way to get white to print VIA flexi thru using a specific spot white.
We are now running the current version 22.0.1 of Flexi and they still have not added an option other than CYMK and RGB for the crop mark border color.

I have a 700w and I print the white box. I can screenshot where the settings are in flexi if you want.

 

[DChorbowski]

I have a 700w and I print the white box. I can screenshot where the settings are in flexi if you want.

That would be most excellent if you could do that for me.

 

[Splash0321]

That would be most excellent if you could do that for me.

1. From flexi's Rip and Print Dialog box you go to the contour/cut tab. Click the "options" button in the Registration Mark section.
2. "Print mask around registration marks" needs to be selected. Also, the grimco tech and I determined that we could not get it to print this mask if you printed it in true white so I backed the colors off and use R252, G252, B252 which still shows up white. I cant recall the logic behind that but it works when not true white and doesnt work if you have it at 255 255 255.

Images 3 & 4 show you how you can also find the same settings from production manager if you've already sent a file and forgot to change these settings. I have PTSD from spending a full day and alot of vinyl trying to get this to work so when I send to production manager I always go into these settings and check there one last time before sending.

5. what it looks like printed with my current settings

 

[DChorbowski]

1. From flexi's Rip and Print Dialog box you go to the contour/cut tab. Click the "options" button in the Registration Mark section.
2. "Print mask around registration marks" needs to be selected. Also, the grimco tech and I determined that we could not get it to print this mask if you printed it in true white so I backed the colors off and use R252, G252, B252 which still shows up white. I cant recall the logic behind that but it works when not true white and doesnt work if you have it at 255 255 255.

Images 3 & 4 show you how you can also find the same settings from production manager if you've already sent a file and forgot to change these settings. I have PTSD from spending a full day and alot of vinyl trying to get this to work so when I send to production manager I always go into these settings and check there one last time before sending.

5. what it looks like printed with my current settings

Thanks Ill give it a shot!