HP Designjet Z2100 44" RIP question

[Printease]

Hello,

We have a customer who was, I believe, undersold a 44" HP Designjet Z2100 without a RIP by another dealer. Now, they are realizing that they can only print to certain lengths because of the limits of running without the RIP. They are also doing a fair amount of these larger (most over 8ft in length) outputs, so the current processing speed is also a hindrance.

My question is, what RIPs are people using successfully out there with this printer, and if you are using one, does the software type RIP suffice, or would you recommend a hardware solution? Most of their files are received as PDFs.

Thank you.

 

[jardo]

We did the same thing in our shop and we ended up getting a EFI Designer Edition RIP. It works but it is a PITA to get support on it because EFI, I believe no longer supports the RIP and you have to go through HP for issues. I would fully investigate all your options prior to purchasing anything. You may want to see if GMG supports the printer? I like them much better. We have not tested the printer at the lengths you discussed above. Good Luck!

 

[Ian Mackenzie]

EFI Designer Edition has been discontinued for almost 2 years.
If it was bought from EFI, then EFI offers support. If you buy an EFI support contract, then they support it. If you did none of those things, then how could you expect EFI to support it...;-)...?

It was replaced by EFI eXpress and that is a very easy and capable RIP.
GMG is too much product here. It's mainly for proofing even though they are trying to get into wide format.

Other choices:

- SAi
- Onyx
- EFI Fiery XF
- EFI eXpress

 

[prepressing]

Hardware RIPs are usually limited in their upgrade paths and supported output devices. A software based RIP would certainly help with the processing speed and job length issues you are having. We sell the RTI Harlequin RIP which is very capable of fixing both of these issues. Depending on the type of printing being done our software may be a good fit for their needs. Visit Harlequin RIP, Harlequin RIPs, Software RIP, NEW! Harlequin Software RIP Version 8.1 for more information. If you are printing over 8 feet in length it is important that you use a network connection for faster throughput. You may also want to use a crossover cable to directly connect from the RIP computer to the printer. With whatever RIP solution you choose, you should update the PPDs on the design computers to allow for the larger format. We have had some customers set the RIP up to output to a shared Windows printer (on the same comptuer as the RIP). This allows the RIP to simply write out the file to the Windows printer which also speeds up production.

 

[D-Nasty]

We use the GMG colorProof used for printer configuration, printer calibration using the calibration wizard, manually starting a job and Hotfolder setup. The GMG RipServer generates TIFF files from PDF files and then to print. I pulled most of this verbiage out of the GMG Installation Guide. It may be overkill for what you need but we have had it running for a few years now and it has been great.

 

[Printease]

Wow, thank you all, this is really good feedback.

HP tech support claims they should be able to do these larger sizes even without a third party solution, but I have seen enough horror stories online from other users saying that is not the case. Thanks for reinforcing that idea. I'll try to let you know how this all plays out once HP completes their analysis of the problem.

 

[Ian Mackenzie]

BTW, if you use a RIP - any RIP - you will save about 25% on ink compared to the HP PS driver.

 

[Printease]

Again, another great bit of information that I am sure they will now include in their decision making process on this possible purchase. Thanks Ian!

 

[nirupakah]

you can print longer drawings also with just the printer pcl driver - in the general system tab (i think it is called Advanced...) there is somwhere an option called "Application rendering resolution" or something like that. select 300 ppi (or dpi). now you should be able to print drawings longer than 1.5 meter. use the preview funtion to see the results - it really shows what part of a drawing will or will not be output.

 

[richsweeney]

I have a hp 800ps, that I am able to edit the print driver. I was able to change the max length to whatever I needed. Not sure if that would work with this printer.

 

[Printease]

@nirupakah -They have already tried your suggestion of decreasing the resolution- that is not a desirable solution for them. The image quality is affected too poorly this way.

@richsweeney - How did you edit the print driver to get it to work?

 

[nirupakah]

printease: i'm not quite sure we are talking about the same thing here. i am not talking about lowering actual resolution of an image, but just changing some settings in the pcl driver (in a tab of the print dialog box). i have used it many times and have not noticed any substantial decrease in quality. on the other hand, i have never scrutinised it very closely, but still i would have noticed if there had been something really wrong.
as for "800ps" - ps usually indicates that the printer has a built-in adobe ps3 rip (which btw makes the printer about two times more expensive...), so there should not be such problems as there are with the pcl driver.