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screen printing => Show Your Stuff => Topic started by: ZooCity on December 05, 2012, 11:40:19 PM
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Looks great inkman. I avoid 4CP entirely, I like sim, but I can see it's efficacy for jobs like this. I know the day will come that we'll just have to run it and on that day I'll be ordering some of those triple strength CMYK inks and getting my seps printed from an imagesetter.
It would be awesome to have a rip/inkjet, as Pierre has managed that could get it done but I think imageset films are like $10 a pop from Netseps.
If I stay in this game much longer I might look into an imagesetter myself. That would be deluxe, and bonus is pre-punched/reg'd film for the pin lock.
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I,m surprise imagesetters have not went down in price considering so many shops now use inkjet printers and have gotten great prints with them.
Darryl
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I have two imagesetters, ancient (1980) technology that cost $20K new. I paid $1 each.
The film they put out is beautiful, absolutely stunning. Dealing with the setup, chemicals, etc. is a whole
'nother thing.
You can pick them up pretty cheaply nowadays, most offset shops have gone to CTP.
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I'm not expert on imagesetters for today, but I imagine that they have come down a great deal.
When I was researching my last one, back in 1999, the lowest cost was 16,000. Now, I'm sure the market has almost disappeared for screen printer sales. The only ones probably using them today are the off set industry. Even then, Digital print has taken over in that market as well. Still, for mass production of magazines and the like, you need a good imagesetter to make the screens and plates. This is what the "true imagesetters" were originally designed for.
Eb, I'll take one of those off your hands. I'll even pay shipping. ")
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That was a good deal EB, but does OYO still make them for screen print...I would have thought by now they would have come out with there own brand of inkjet film makers
Darryl
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The film they put out is beautiful, absolutely stunning. Dealing with the setup, chemicals, etc. is a whole
'nother thing.
That's kinda what I figured. Maybe worth it, maybe not. We do have an Xpedx in this half of the state I could use for service.
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The Oyo Techstyler is around 12K I think, for the smaller textile unit. When I first started here we had this giant unit that took up about half of our break room that was for film output. We acquired it from a bankrupt shop and never got it working because of the 15 gallons of chems and complete lack of knowledge on how to get it working. No doubt that it was a pricey machine back in the day when it was new, had to be 20K or so because it was a seriously large piece of equipment. We still have some film from that thing that is from that other shop and it's simply amazing in detail and density. Our little inkjet can't touch it in quality.
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I never understood why, well..maybe rather, I never (liked) that Oyo or others called their film printers "imagesetters". Sure, they set images "technically", but that seems like lumping in a Ford with a Ferrari. I would drive the Ford, but it's not Ferrari.
I will be printing films here and yes, i will use any digital printer I can get now. One day, I will have the money to choose what I want and I will be getting the closest thing to a true imagesetter if not a real one. Like Eb said, you can pick them up cheaper. Heck, sometimes free. By the time I can afford to operate one, they will be gone. Servicing them and getting film is not that cheap. In the end, DTS is as close as I would get. I would get it for quality purposes more than how many screens I can do in a day. For those looking to do high end (as I plan on doing), It's a good choice. Granted, I am far from that now.
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I ran this bad boy when I worked for Russell Athletics in Columbus Ga. We did all of the pro licenses semi and college.
we could do 36" wide sim process prints back in the day.
(http://www.kitmondo.com/equipment-images/453246/agfa-agfa-avantra-44s.jpg)
http://www.kitmondo.com/agfa-agfa-avantra-44s/ref453246 (http://www.kitmondo.com/agfa-agfa-avantra-44s/ref453246)
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That'd be a piece of equipment there.
Bet it got warm, heh.
:)
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Ya know, I don't remember it ever getting hot. I do remember that the RIp for it (Crystal raster) was $15,000 alone.
I don't know what they spent on it but the service contract was 5,000 a year. Boy did we get our money's worth too. It was needing service about every month or more. Junk is what it was. Prob. 150,000 for that thing.
One nice thing is the rip did stochastic dots. (random) dots. Sort of like indexing without the pattern. A 10 micron might be equivalent to a 1 5% dot in this 250 lpi print on left.
(http://knowmorerightnow.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/stochasticfromcpc1.jpg)
The cool thing was,
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Dan is correct. Many companies like Oyo refer to their products as "Image Setters" when they are really film out putting devices; whether it be thermal, laser or inkjet.
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The Stoch looks really looks good, I remember David Crane maker of Posjet/Squaredot talking about this many years ago, he is the reason I bought and started using inkjets to make film. He call the epson 3000 back then the poor mans imagesetter, I think he he still around.
Darryl
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Just terrible pictures as usual (why is it so hard to take pics of shirts???) but here's a 6co I just ran today on silver and ash grey seafoam. My first "full color" dc sim process.
Sericol and CCI inks.
330/30 S on all screens.
60 lpi
Seps by Mr. Dan who did a bang up job.
Smoothest full color job I've ran in awhile- only had to bump one screen with the micros and that was the worst of it - but damn, what a workout doing this manually.
You can see in the close ups that the overall pic doesn't really tell the story, it looks gorgeous in real life and is not overly darkened on the black as it appears on the crappy pic- the opalescent, "mother of pearl" tones that were pulled off kinda blew my mind. I over saturated the colors a little form the original piece knowing the dc inks would have a rough time getting enough penetration through this mesh and expecting a little fade out after the first couple washings. It looked great on the ash grey seafoam too which I was skeptical about.
Only thing I wish is that the black would have been stepped on to smooth out the dots, the rest of the dots are truly invisible to the naked eye but can be seen on these macro and super macros. Print is at about 12x18.
(http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad253/Z00_CITY/Courtney%20Blazon%20Zebra%20Prints/Zebra.jpg)
(http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad253/Z00_CITY/Courtney%20Blazon%20Zebra%20Prints/zebrahouses.jpg)
(http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad253/Z00_CITY/Courtney%20Blazon%20Zebra%20Prints/superclosehouses.jpg)
(http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad253/Z00_CITY/Courtney%20Blazon%20Zebra%20Prints/zebrasnails.jpg)
(http://i941.photobucket.com/albums/ad253/Z00_CITY/Courtney%20Blazon%20Zebra%20Prints/zebradragonflies.jpg)
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Zoo, you're going to give Pierre a run for his money man. GREAT PRINT!.
Nicely held dots all over. Thats a major part of what it takes to reproduce an image like this correctly. Ad to that, that it must be printed with just the right inks, mesh pressure, speed, etc. All that. Looks like you got everything down to the finest details in order to make great things happen.
Very impressed.
Thanks
Dan
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Awesome print Zoo. Wasatch Rip will let you produce Stochastic dots. I am looking at that one real hard. It is just a little on the pricy side which sucks.
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I've heard that before, but when you look at a RIP that will do these extra things outside just converting to traditional halftones, it's an added benefit. For the peeps that take advantage of a good rip as best they can, it's worth the additional cost. Some rips for offset that do these extra things can be as high as 10-20k.
A really good RIp does much more than our normal requirements to get dots on film.
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How much is Wasatch?
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http://www.wasatch.com/pricing.html (http://www.wasatch.com/pricing.html)
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[url]http://www.wasatch.com/pricing.html[/url] ([url]http://www.wasatch.com/pricing.html[/url])
the problem is, you will need to upgrade from the regular version to one of the more expensive ones to get the stochastic support. Last I talked to them, it was $1100 for the full package (desktop version supporting up to 17" wide printers).
pierre
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Just terrible pictures as usual (why is it so hard to take pics of shirts???) but here's a 6co I just ran today on silver and ash grey seafoam. My first "full color" dc sim process.
Sericol and CCI inks.
330/30 S on all screens.
60 lpi
Seps by Mr. Dan who did a bang up job.
Smoothest full color job I've ran in awhile- only had to bump one screen with the micros and that was the worst of it - but damn, what a workout doing this manually.
You can see in the close ups that the overall pic doesn't really tell the story, it looks gorgeous in real life and is not overly darkened on the black as it appears on the crappy pic- the opalescent, "mother of pearl" tones that were pulled off kinda blew my mind. I over saturated the colors a little form the original piece knowing the dc inks would have a rough time getting enough penetration through this mesh and expecting a little fade out after the first couple washings. It looked great on the ash grey seafoam too which I was skeptical about.
Only thing I wish is that the black would have been stepped on to smooth out the dots, the rest of the dots are truly invisible to the naked eye but can be seen on these macro and super macros. Print is at about 12x18.
that looks GREAT!!! Did you do anything to the inks?
pierre
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Imagesetter film is actually pretty inexpensive, for now. Not quite inkjet film prices but close.
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Pierre, I did use different levels of activator (lower) than normal on this but that's about it on the ink side. There was some tweaking from the "starter" pantone formulas of course. Otherwise just CCI white/base and Sericol colors out of the buckets.
You guys would wretch if you saw how bad some parts of my prepress were for this...I could do a lot better on that front but the difference at this point would be "for printers only" if you know what I mean.
eb do you avoid running your imagesetter due to the chem setup/maintenance? I would pay for it if it was not unreasonable just to get those sweet films and, just as beneficial, accurately pre-punched for the pin lock. The pre-punch would actually justify the cost easily I imagine.
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Yep.
Inkjet is just so much more convenient, and perfectly fine for about %99.99 of what we do.
The things are heavy as hell. Like pallet heavy.
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Do you worry about companies discontinuing the imagesetter film? It happened with stat cameras. Just wondering if it will happen with that too if all that is left are screen print shops. Or if most companies will discontinue it and the few that keep making it will jack the prices up.
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I ran this bad boy when I worked for Russell Athletics in Columbus Ga. We did all of the pro licenses semi and college.
we could do 36" wide sim process prints back in the day.
([url]http://www.kitmondo.com/equipment-images/453246/agfa-agfa-avantra-44s.jpg[/url])
[url]http://www.kitmondo.com/agfa-agfa-avantra-44s/ref453246[/url] ([url]http://www.kitmondo.com/agfa-agfa-avantra-44s/ref453246[/url])
We just got rid of one of those (About 1.5 years ago) when we wend direct-to-plate at my full time job.
The only difference, we were doing negatives instead of positives :)
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The shop in Daytona I work at occasionally has an old AGFA 1000. The films are gorgeous. When I was doing work for an offset shop they had one just like it, run off my old Mac PowerPC 7100, OS9 that I'd sold them. That shop picked it up for about 2 grand from a service bureau across the street that went t!ts up .