Desperately need help finding colorbar

Hello,

The company I work for has just purchased a used Heidelberg CD 102-5+L sheetfed press, installed by a third party (not Heidelberg). It has a CP-2000 console, and what I believe to be a Prinect AxisControl spectrophotometer system. I'm knew to this... I don't believe we have Heidelberg support. I have a few questions...

-Where can I find or purchase a colorbar that will work with this spectro system? We will need to put it on impositions within Prinergy Preps...
The colorbars we were using with our old Heidelberg sheetfed press do not appear to work with this system.

-What is the purpose of this spectro system -- does it measure colors and automatically set adjustments in the console? Any information would be much appreciated...

-What is the appropriate name for this scanner?

Sam
 
I think we're after Prinect Dipco control strip elements. There is a download on Heidelberg's website, for the 2017 elements. I'm hoping one of the control strips from this batch will work. If not, I may need to find Dipco 2.0. Not sure... our system is from around 2006 or earlier.
 
Do you have a printed sample of the correct colorbar? If so, you could probably just create a PDF or EPS file from scratch to match it.

I don't know anything about your particular hardware. If I had a scanner and needed to figure out what it needed for a colorbar (and had no physical sample to copy), I would do the following:

Check the scanner software for clues. If a system allows for different colorbar layouts, there's a fair chance it has some method of selecting which layout to use, or even software to edit/create those layouts. You might find evidence of what it's looking for there. When attempting to scan without the correct colorbar, it may visually show the order of patches it's expecting to see.

If that didn't yield the answer, I would try to make the correct colorbar by trial and error. Most colorbars have patches of equal width. Those patches will generally repeat key by key for solid patches, and any extra patches will usually be different for each key. For example, if your ink keys are 30mm wide (and therefore repeat every 30mm), the colorbar will probably be divided into patches that are 3.75mm (30/8), 4.2857...mm (30/7), 5mm (30/6), 6mm (30/5) or 7.5mm (30/4). If the press has 6 units, it would probably have at least 6 patches per key, and 6 of those patches would be solids (one for each unit). Leftover patches will be things like gray balance, 25/50/75% tints, slur/star targets, etc. Those may or may not be completely ignored by the software (they might be there solely for manual inspection).

So let's say we have a 5 unit press with a 1020mm printing area that's 34 keys with a key width of 30mm. I would begin with the assumption that there are 8 patches per key, then print out a colorbar on an inkjet printer that repeats 3.75mm patches in the pattern black, cyan, magenta, yellow, white/blank, white/blank, white/blank, white/blank. I'd try to scan that with the software set up as though you were printing CMYK and see what it does. If that doesn't work, I'd go with 7 patches per key, then 6, then 5. Less than 5 wouldn't make sense for a 5 unit press.

It probably wouldn't be easy, but I'd bet that would do it. Patches would probably be expected in the order KCMY,CMYK,YMCK or KYMC (the last two are the reverse of the first two - you could just rotate a test print 180 degrees to try the reverse order). You can probably modulate what ink you tell the software is in each unit to test different orders (patch positions probably always correlate with units, not inks). Getting the scanner to correctly understand where the colorbar starts could potentially be problematic.
 
I can send you some HD colour bars. I don't know if they 'll work for you but could give you a starting point. Contact me at pritchardgordon @ gmail dot com
 
Hey kyle, Alex_AG , gordo , what do you folks use for ink presetting? I'm trying to get a program called 'PressPerCent' to work for us (by writing jobs to job cards), as we don't have any of the Heidelberg proprietary softwares in place... but it seems I will have to learn about different curves, to calibrate the software to the press, before we can use it. What kind of software do you use for this task?

I have another thread going, regarding the ink presetting, looking for any advice. -> https://printplanet.com/forum/prepr...idelberg-sheetfed-press-via-linear-flash-card

By the way, our CD 102-5+L has 32 ink keys per unit, 3.25cm width of each key... The color bar the scanner picked up from that Dipco elements library was called 'Prinect CS-4i Format 102/105 Dipco 4.5f' and has either 102 or 105 measurement units. Does the 102/105 measure units vs 32 ink keys sound right? The bar also has special units every so often, like slurring / doubling measurement units or something?

Thanks
 
I have a Printlink trial and can generate PPF files, but I don't have Heidelberg Prepress Gateway. Is this a paid program?? I've tested out a program called 'PressPerCent' and it does load the PPF files. However, the ink key values that the software is generating, I'm being told by pressman, they're way off. Regardless of Prepress Gateway or PressPerCent, would they both need to be calibrated in some manner, to the press???

I see in my Printlink options, I have set to Press Interface: Heidelberg CPC32 Version 2.0 -- I will try Heidelberg Prepress Gateway instead and see if it makes a difference. I'll get them to run a job thru PressPerCent using PPFs, load it from job card, see if the ink key values are closer.

Thanks!
 

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