meta dimension poll

rbailleu

Well-known member
I was wondering how many people are still using the old ibm 220 series rip. I currently am running meta 6 on a ibm 220 and am thinking about upgrading before installing 6.5. i have an ibm 235 that I am working on getting ready for transfer. but was wonder if I should just wait and go to the new dell 2900. I would really appreciate any feed back on speed and problems with old versus new.
 
Re: meta dimension poll

I'm very happy with our Dell 2900 running Meta Prep 6.5.350. It chews through just about everything with great ease. Have been running it for just over a year along with two other 2900's, one for Remote Access and the other for Printready L.

Very stable boxes.
 
Re: meta dimension poll

did you buy these direct from heidelberg already setup, or did you buy separately.
is there anything unique about the 2900. my understanding is that my old 5volt prosetter card wont work on the new dell.
 
Re: meta dimension poll

Yes, we bought them from H'berg already setup. I don't think you HAVE to use a 2900. I'm sure they chose it because it's a big, sturdy box with redundant power supplies and lots of drive bays. (H'berg uses serial attached SCSI drives. Nice!!) They setup the RAIDs and configure everything.

I don't know about your Speedway card and the Prosetter. That's a great question. Our Meta Prep doesn't drive our Suprasetter, it throws 1 bit Tiffs to a lesser Dell box (don't remember the model number, but I'll post it tomorrow) running Meta Shooter which drives our Supra through a Speedway card. I'd suggest sending a message and posing the question to Mark Tonkovich (marktonk), Heidelberg's CtP Product Manager. He's a user on this forum and is an awfully helpful guy. If he doesn't have the answer I'm sure he will tell you where to go...well, not +where to go+, but he can probably put you in touch with the right people. :)

Hope this helps.
 
Re: meta dimension poll

Hi Rob,

We are in the mist of our end of the fiscal year crunch so sorry for a delayed response. I checked on the 5v card, the information you were given is correct, the 2900 does not support 5 v, The transition in the PC world has been to 3.3v especially on the high end server. As Jim attested to, the 2900 is a very robust server.

If your production requires an increase in productivity, you may split up your system into a MetaPrep and MetaShooter. You may be able to use one of your PC's that support 5v as the shooter and a 2900 as the MetaPrep. This distributes the tasks, allows for more parallel processing and more productivity.

Or upgrade to a 3.3v card.

Regards,

Mark
 
Re: meta dimension poll

I divided our RIP into 2 boxes when I upgraded to Meta 6 (.?)
A Dell 2900, decked out, for the Meta Rip, and the older IBM server for the proofing server.
Coming from a Rampage RIP - I was concerned, and asked, about Heidelberg supporting a ROOM workflow.
Our Rep said - yes - this is how it works.
Then, once installed -
we discovered that we are actually submitting PDFs to 2 separate RIPs - one for the platesetter and one for the proofer.
We were told - this will be fine - "it is the same RIP so there can be no variations."
Well ... this is not the case.
We (semi) regularly RIP files that output differently through the proofing RIP than through the platesetter RIP.
Though none of these have ever gone through unnoticed and bitten us ...
even though, they easily could have .

Not complaining here - just a casual observation.
Hoping the upcoming upgrade to the Adobe PDF engine will alleviate this and a few other nagging processing problems.


MSD
 
Re: meta dimension poll

Hi MSD,

I believe we are talking about two different scenarios here.

If I read your post right, you are printing to MetaDimension to rip the PDF. This is also connected to your platesetter? The second PC is for proofing only, it would be a MetaProof station. Both MetaDimension and MetaProof have the same rip so they should respond the same. Did you contact TAC (Technical Assistant Center) when this happened? I will check with them on Monday.

What version of sw are you on? I take also you are running CPSI only,

Please PM me who told you this was a ROOM workflow.

A possibility for Rob is to have a 2900 MetaPrep that would rip PDF into 1 bit tiffs. The same 2900 would be used for proofing. The second, existing PC, would become a MetaShooter. This would recieve 1 bit tiffs from MetaPrep and would drive the CTP (via the 5v interface card). It would also be the control PC for the CtP and if automation is involved, it looks forward to determine when to swap out cassettes for a plate size change. This would take place as soon as the last plate of the existing job is in the works.

Regards,

Mark
 
Re: meta dimension poll

Our Meta 6.x (upgrading to 6.5 and PDF engine soon) is tied to our ProSetter.
We drive files to Meta through Signa Station.
With our old Meta (4.x ?) we drove the Platesetter and Hp through the same box.
However, we still sent the file twice to be RIPped for each device.
I did set the workflow up, for a day or two, as a ROOM workflow utilizing a "Pause" after proofing
then "continuing" to the platesetter later.
The problem with this workflow was a matter of wasting proofing media. When we ran the ROOM method, utilizing the post proof pause,
our HP would only produce proofs the size of our plates and not the size of the "job".
So even if we were producing a 1 up 3"x5" card on 6x9 stock - the HP would only produce an HP at our plate size of approx. 22x15.
So, we went back to the RIP twice method - once for proof - once for plate to be able to produce HP's just the size of the stock to be run.
Saves enormous amount of material through time - but a, sort of, bogus workflow IMHO.
I was at the Los Angeles office for a week, with Michelle and Laurence, and a solution could not be established at that time.
So, we lived with it and all went pretty well.
Then we upgraded to the Meta 6 RIP in April. Our Rep (Phil ? - I believe he is no longer with Heidelberg) had assured us that
the new RIP upgrade would assure us of a true ROOM workflow.
We thought this would be great, because it would free up a server for us to us as a PC worstation in the prepress
or to replace our "poor" Signa box and we could use a less powerful shooter.
Well, it doesn't. We now drive the workflow through 2 boxes
One server box for the platesetter RIP and one server box for the Proofer RIP.
Everyone, including Adam? (our new Rep) as well as jim Ross and others in Atlanta have said this should be no problem.
However, we are seeing regular differences between our proofs and our plates.
Just yesterday, for example, I produced a 20 page annual report as 4 pagers on 19x12.5.
It was CMYK plus spot colors - so I used 6 color - color bars and extra solid take off bars for the pms colors.
This made the color bars butted against the work. We sent the bars to the back, no problem.
When we output HPs - on all of the fronts the color bars were perfect (sent to back).
On all of the backs - the color bars were in front on top of the work and in the job.
But - on ALL of the plates (front and back) all of the color bars were in back and fine.
- A minor difference - but a difference, none the less, and a major concern for our Sales Rep and the Customer
who, of course, did not want the color bars in the job.
We also have continuing problems with spot colors simply disappearing or being converted to CMYK or being converted to a screen of Black.
Sometimes, the spot color will disappear when running through Cockpit.
Sometimes the spot colors will make it through Cockpit and Signa but disappear coming into Meta
and will report as not being there and, of course, will not plate.
(This particular problem has cost us to rerun jobs with lost time, materials and money -
as well as being embarrassing to the prepress department as well as the shop in general.)
I have discussed this with Jim and have sent samples to Atlanta for analysis - to no avail.
I also had Josh Mc. look into this when he was here. But, since he is involved with Prinect now
he obviously did not have the time to dive deeply in to situation.
We discovered that sometimes the spot color problem can be remedied with optimizing the PDF.
Sometimes it works to optimize with a MAC - sometimes it HAS to be done on a PC -
sometimes it does not work at all and we need to go back and produce the PDF with Distiller.
Sometimes it works just to change the PMS name to "C".
We usually always catch it - but it is easy to overlook in a 60 or 100 page file.

We are hoping that when someone drops in to upgrade us to Meta 6.5 and the Adobe engine
that they will have the time to look into and correct these little nagging problems.

MSD

Sorry, not being in the office, I may have some names wrong and I forget some of the folks I have spoken with.
 
Re: meta dimension poll

Hi MSD,

I was just at your company the week before last and met with one of the owners for about an hour or so.

My name is Abe Hayhurst and I am the Heidelberg Prinect and CTP representative for the Pacific North region. You may recall that we met at the Heidelberg Inforum event in Portland back in January. I have been a Heidelberg customer for 11 of my 13 years in the printing industry and have hands on experience with our products, including MetaDimension, which you were discussing.

Did you call our support department to try and resolve this issue?

I'll call you this morning and get this resolved for you right away.

Please call me anytime you have a problem or I can help you.

Thanks,

Abe Hayhurst
 
Re: meta dimension poll

mark,

I have been thinking about the 2900. we are a small company and I don't want to spend more than I have to. I love all my heidelberg equipment. sm52, sm 74, qm46. stahl folder, ks, prosetter, meta and signa. I just wish I could get a straight answer from the sales people. I currently am running meta 6 on the ibm 220 server. and it is slow, but we don't make 100 plates a day to often. someday its 3 plates. I just recieved our upgrade to 6.5. I asked about installing it on the 220. and one tech said it will corupt my files when I run it. the sales guy said it just wont run. which both answers are incorrect, but I do want something faster and reliable. so I am thinking about upgrading. Heidelberg wants $10,000 for the 2900, and $1600 for a new speedway card. I can buy the comparably equiped dell for $5000.00 direct. and if it does not matter I could go a little cheap on the 2900 and upgrade it later. I just want something a little faster. I could get a 2900 nicely equiped for 3000 and a new card. I know that heidelberg want to sell the new box and will support it. but they don't support what I have now, and it has been working out just fine.

so can I buy and 2900 with 2 dualcore 2.0 ghz cpu and 2 sas drives and put in a new speedway card and install the software.
setup the directories and do a backup of the setup then restore on the new machine and replace and go. I don't even mind paying heidelberg to do the change over. I just don't want to pay $5000 additional for the rip if it does not matter.
 
Re: meta dimension poll

Were a small company as well but we paid the big bucks for the 2900. And although it cost a lot the system is great and we havent had one hang up yet. If I were you I would do what you have plan to save some money but also have Heidelberg do the change over.
 
Re: meta dimension poll

I guess that is the question can I do my own rip. I get conflicting bs everytime I ask. One time its "sure use what ever computer you want as long as it has windows 2003 server on it." the next it's "it has to be our server or we wont touch it" I don't know why they would care. they get paid by the hour. I would understand if I wanted a hardware contract. but the software contract does not cover onsite service any way. just questions over the phone. any way I have a server that I am going to play with and see if it works in demo/ startup mode. the worst that could happen is that I will end up bying a new dell 2900
 
Re: meta dimension poll

mark,

thanks i got a call from bob meyer. they have a new pecision work station for much less.
 
Re: meta dimension poll

Hi Rob,

Been a busy week, Sales training. Glad to hear Bob did contact you. As for the 2900, we actually have several different platforms, with the highest have redundant power supplies, Hardware RAID, etc. It is a very robust system. The other is equipped well but not the same degree. Not everyone will require this type/degree of server that the 2900 is, so we do offer different, addtional solutions. One sounds like it will better suit your needs. Good luck.

Regards,

Mark
 
Re: meta dimension poll

Hey Rob, you should seriously check out the HP G4 or higher series, IMHO you get more for your money. I was told the same BS by Rampage about their hardware only, yeah right, I installed 2 nice HP workstations running 03 server and never looked back.

It seems like all vendors try to protect their profit streams rather than being more open and honest about what will really work. I would bet the farm that you could use ANY high end workstation or server for your needs, in some cases where your throughput needs are small you could probably use old hardware, they just do not want you to know. Experiment away, that's free.
 
Re: meta dimension poll

John,

With all due respect, what would you have done if it did not work?

I have seen this happen just a few months ago and we were not able to help the client troubleshoot the conflicts he had because we did not have the same hardware in our lab.

After reading your response, I guess we were just trying to protect our profit and not being honest because we did not have the same hardware and could not emulate his problem?


Regards,

Mark
 
Re: meta dimension poll

Hey Mark, read many of your posts in the past, but you have got to admit the HPG.x series is fine to run your rip as well as Apogee and Rampage. I know the hardware is a serious profit stream for rip vendors and if customers want to purchase their own hardware, as long as the min. specs. are met, it should not matter which box you use.

I would not be surprised to see someone try one of the new 8 core macs with enough ram to run several instances of 03 svr and multiple rips. This is extremely possible, I would try it, and so would others on this list. This is what II am talking about, the real options, not just options that are offered.
 
Re: meta dimension poll

everything comes down to profit. thats why I like to consider all options.

if the buying a computer that did not work you could always sell it.
it is surprising what you can find on ebay.
 
Re: meta dimension poll

Hi Our print factor's Mate Dimasion Dongle is not working error.
I needed Dongle tell me about it please
 

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