Accuset 800/Viper printing off-centre HELP!

ian1000rx

Member
Hi,

I've got an Agfa Accuset 800 Plus, hooked up to a Mac G3 running a Viper RIP. I output to this primarily using a Mac G5 running OS X 10.4.11.

Since a couple of days ago, everything after the first job sent to the RIP/Imagesetter is printing "off-centre" - the centre bullets on the artwork are appear about 45mm in from the edge of the film, and anything to the right of this is "wrapping around" and being printed on the opposite edge.

Note that the FIRST job through after a cold reset outputs fine, it's only from the second job onwards that it screws up.

I've re-installed the printer and .ppd in the G5, but I'm pretty sure it's not at fault as I get the same result outputting from my old backup G4.

There's next to nothing I can find to adjust in the Viper RIP that would make any difference. I've checked the imagesetter settings, and run a left-margin test but everything seems fine. I even set the imagesetter to Center Capstan but that made no difference either.

Any ideas, anyone?

Edited by: Ian Porter on Jan 30, 2008 11:33 AM
 
Re: Accuset 800/Viper printing off-centre HELP!

If the first print job is successful, but all subsequent jobs are skewed, it would be my guess that there is a software conflict somewhere and the problem is not a hardware issue.

Is it possible your request to print is conflicting with print spools that are present but you are not aware of? Could there be a conflicting print driver from an older operating system that is still active perhaps that is spooling to your output driver? I would doa find search on everything print driver related and delete anything not recognized as current to the OS you are using.

My guess Is the problem lies in the printer drivers software working with the present OS.
 
Re: Accuset 800/Viper printing off-centre HELP!

I'd come to the conclusion myself that it must be software related, as the imagesetter's built-in tests work fine.

I don't think it's the drivers at the Mac end, as for starters my G5 has only ever had OS X on it and always used the same driver which has always been OK up to this point (although I re-installed it anyway). Plus I got the same results from my old OS9 based G4 setup. It's been working fine with this driver for over a year, and the problem has only just occured.

I'm the only one outputting to the setup, so I can't see that there should be any conflicting print spools, unless I've misunderstood?

This leaves it as being a problem with the RIP Viper software. I re-installed this, and initially it didn't seem to solve anything.

However, now it seems to have sorted itself out - I'm not going to question why, but I'd would've been nice to know...

I'm begining to suspect that it suddenly took a dislike to me using a full-width canvas size (i.e. 350mm wide) in Photoshop, as things started to work once I started using a slightly smaller size. I can't think of a reason why this should happen, and when I'm less busy I'll try it a full width again, but for now all seems OK.
 
Re: Accuset 800/Viper printing off-centre HELP!

The plot thickens...

Yesterday I was mucking about with different ppds to see if they'd make any difference and suddenly the thing started working ok again!

So, great I think - for whatever reason it became allergic to my old PPD and a new one has fixed things (now using Accuset 800-B (found buried on the RIP itself) rather than Accuset 800-A (downloaded from Adobe)).

Everything works OK for a day, but when I start outputting this morning it's wrapping around again! Aaarrrgh!

So seeing as it was the one thing I haven't tried I opened up the case of the Mac RIP and re-seated the interface card. In the process I also double-checked all the cable connections.

Now it works again! So, has it been some sort of loose/intermittent connection between the RIP and the imagesetter all along? Has ayone else experienced this kind of problem?
 
Re: Accuset 800/Viper printing off-centre HELP!

Sorry, should've made it clear that between those last two posts the imagesetter had gone back to wrapping around. The first "fix" only cured it for a couple of days before it went back to wrapping around...
 

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