Calculating printing up per sheet

[pepsi710]

Hi All

I am making one estimator system. under which i want to auto calculate
1. printing product size
2. select paper wheather big or small sheet
3. print machine minimum and maximum size

can any one help me how to calculate how many printing product can print in one sheet.
base on long and short product grain

 

[LoneGoose]

Surely the product size is an input, not something you need to calculate?

 

[Morning Flight]

Surely the product size is an input, not something you need to calculate?

Definitely, LoneGoose. That and the minimum and maximum machine limits. The estimating program can only auto-calculate the press sheet size, based on how many up, bleeds (if any), and trim for booklets. For perfect bound books, the program also needs to know the paper thickness and page count to be able to calculate the size of the spine.

It's unlikely you'll find anyone to give away the algorithm for that, Pepsi710. Kind'a like the Pepsi folks putting their formula on the internet.

Hal Heindel
www.morningflight.com

 

[plegadizos]

Plegadizos

Plegadizos

Well, It could be as MF says. When I think the problems I got to calculate our first jobs I get angry because it was so difficult.

However, I was a little involved in the industry and I was supported for some people who gave me advices to estimate my costs in order to offer a good price to get a project. So, I've noticed, at least in Mexico in small and medium printing companies, the owners estimate their costs according to paper cost; ink cost; prepress cost; machine capacity and they put a cost for every hour that a machine is working; printing process, cut process, glue process, binding process, etc. Those are the main costs...well, and the size of the product in order to place a good sheet for printing.

Maybe, we are not going to say our amaaaazing algorithm, but if we share a little bit more we can learn a lot and we can provide a better service. Finally, as we say in spanish, sun rises for all.

Anyway, for me it has been so helpful this site xD

 

[Morning Flight]

Maybe, we are not going to say our amaaaazing algorithm, but if we share a little bit more we can learn a lot and we can provide a better service. Finally, as we say in spanish, sun rises for all.

Couldn't agree more, plegadizos. Which is one of the reasons we're giving away the complete Morning Flight estimating program. Not just for free, but FREE FOREVER! For Offset, Copy, and Digital. In inches and millimeters. USA and ISO paper sizes. And your own personal language translator so you can talk to it in Spanish.

More than 7,000 printers around the world have already taken us up on it. And nobody has paid a dime. I don't know how much more we can share.

Hal Heindel
www.morningflight.com

 

[plegadizos]

Hi Hal,

I was not talking about your thread, I was talking in general terms...I didn´t realize you offer a program...and a free program. So thanks to let me know it and in my opinion I wrote the last post in order to share my experience when I was starting in this businees..in fact, I´m still learning from other big printer around it.

Edgar

 

[Morning Flight]

Hi Edgar,

Understood. I started a print shop many years ago, and if it hadn't been for the help from fellow printers in Rochester, NY, that shop would have tanked in short order. Nice to be able to finally return the favor.

Hal Heindel
Unitac - Who we are

 

[Al Ferrari]

Are you working on a OS X version?

 

[Morning Flight]

The short answer is No, not for Motorola Macs, Al. Whatever thoughts we might have entertained for porting went out the door when Apple switched to Intel chips. Morning Flight will run on Intel Macs. See Morning Flight on the Mac - The Morning Flight Lounge

It will also run on even the cheapest PC, any machine that does Windows. With prices now below $500, flat screen monitor included, setting up a dedicated box for estimating makes sense, if for no other reason than keeping the desktop publishing Mac free for desktop publishing.

 

[LoneGoose]

Well this thread has taken a bit of a tangent...

pepsi, it depends how you want to program it. If you're taking on programming an entire quoting system and this is your major stumbling block you should probably rethink the whole idea from scratch. Why not just divide the sheet dimention minus the grip, whatever margins, bleed etc. by the size of the product and 'floor' the result? How difficult could it be?

 

[Morning Flight]

Well this thread has taken a bit of a tangent...

Agreed, LoneGoose. I'm probably going to regret this in the morning, but here is a .pdf file that should get us squarely back on track. The file contains source code from Morning Flight that calculates how many products can come out of a press sheet. Yes, it's simple, as you pointed out, just 50 lines. To put things into perspective, even the Free Edition of Morning Flight contains another quarter million+ lines of handwritten code. Along with twenty-eight years worth of programming.

Simple doesn't always mean trivial!

Hal Heindel
www.morningflight.com