Setting for skipping forward to print area on Roland LEJ 640

[lcf007]

I print a lot of blank drops which only have a few bits of design say every metre. I was hoping the LEJ 640 was intelligent enough (combined with Versaworks) to be able to skip forward the metre till the next print section. BUT on mine, it goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth for a whole metre of no print and then it will print what is needed and then rather than skipping forward it goes back forth back forth.

I asked Roland, and they are saying if there was any data then the machine wont skip forward.

So I created a file which million% positive had no print detail in the first metre, then some design started for about 500mm.

I tried first with no trim marks and it still went back forth back forth. Tried with trim marks, same again again.

I've searched the Net and forums and can't find any discussion around it, hence I am posting here. Hopefully someone has experienced this and knows a work around.

Thanks in advance for any assistance. I should add- my objective is to speed up print time because basically its taking 2 hours to print 300mm of pattern on a 2700mm drop because it insists on going back forth back forth the whole way up it.

 

[Zendavor Signs]

Can you post a link for your file? I'm not sure if you can do that here. You can pm me.

 

[lcf007]

Yeh I'm not so much looking for feedback on this specific file.

If someone has YES printed on LEJ640 with gaps in print (areas with zero print data) and the machine forwards the media to the print section- then great- if so- I can work on what I need to do to make this happen and that might include investigating a specific file, a particular setting on machine or in Versworks, or perhaps someone has a trick they used to enable large unprinted areas to move forward.

However- if it cant be done generally, then so be it and I will just to experience print times as though I am printing data for 100% of the file which I am not.

 

[J Hill Designs]

white (blank) area's aren't taken as ZERO data. they are taken as white. white (blank) IS data. the machine knows not to drop any ink. but it still goes through the motions, because that is what it is designed to do.

 

[rubo]

don't know VW, I use a different RIP, the concept is - make your file the size of the image, choose the distance between repeats - or print the same in a row, once the row is printed, manually advance the media and print the next row. Little illustration of what I'm talking about:

 

[lcf007]

Results

Just wanted to finish off this thread with results in case anyone else is looking.

Roland ran some tests on the LEJ640 for me and this was the result...

Printed your file with no trim marks at all and media will feed forward without the carriage scanning. Although the media will feed it only feeds as fast as it would if you were printing data.
Printed with trim marks and carriage will continue to scan through the blank space.

Although we could get the media to feed forward it is no quicker than it would be if the carriage was moving back and forth.
Only other option is to manually allow for the black space on the media by scrolling forward before and after the print.

Thanks to those who made contributions.

 

[player]

At least you aren't wearing out the scan motor and cable/belt...