Can it be done a lot simpler? What do you think?

Phish

Active member
Hi,

Many thanks for stopping by to view this post.

I am trying to look at a NEW way, unfortunately on a budget of course, to re-plan how work is done in our pre-press department, we recently had a unfortunate accident with an old RIP computer which in turn has caused quite a lot of hassle.

We create our documents via a Mac like most people do, or with a pc. Once everything has been added such as trapping, ticks and anything else important into a document, we would then save our work into a separated PDF to be RIPPED into 1Bit Tiffs to be used with our SignTronic Mesh CTP machine, ok not CTP however same principle. These are then converted via our SignTronic onto screens to be used to print.

Also, we use the computer, which is known as the RIP, to produce digital proofs from using the same generated 1Bit tiffs that we are going to use to make screens with, this way we know that if the proofs are incorrect then the main separated files sent to the SignTronic are also incorrect, also showing us how our job should look via progressives and also trapping etc.

Is there not a RIP out there or package that can handle all these things in one or am i still going to have to use individual software packages to RIP our files, print our files and to proof our files? At the moment we use:

RTI RIP Kit to generate our 1Bit Tiffs.
GMG Flexoproof to generate DOT proofs from the 1Bit Tiffs, also there is another part of this software we use to convert composite PDFs into proofs also.
Wasatch RIP to use with our SPYDER digital flatbed.

It can get quite complicated and time consuming learning all these different programs to their full potential, is there not a program that can do it all?

It is going to be interesting if our old RIP has decided to totally R.I.P and not work again, the computer running all this software was quite old, 2006 or older, all our software was out of date also however the old saying of 'if it is not broke, do not fix it' however now, it is broke so we have to fix it, the question is now how and if needing a new machine, what to get and what software to use.

What do you guys use? Is there anyone who is a SCREEN PRINTER and can or want to share their experiences and knowledge?

Many thanks for any help, i am just hoping we can get our old RIP to work again and then atleast start thinking of migrating to a newer machine before it goes again, that way we can atleast copy over profiles etc from old software.

Phil.
 
I have no idea what the output file is but Wasatch offers SP, which, from what I understand, is used to do separations printed on inkjet "Film". The RIP could also do your proofing. I would think these would both work from a common PDF.

Haven't used Wasatch in a while and have never used the SP software. Sure was interesting read when we were throwing our processors in the dumpster!
 
While we aren't screen printers, we do flexo printing on corrugated and the prepress workflow is similar to what screen printers use. We use a RTI (Harlequin) RIP to process files. We are an Illustrator workflow, so we send the files to the RIP from Illustrator (but it works just as well with PDF, InDesign, or whatever else we've tried). The RIP does the trapping and color separating for us, and we can output negatives to an Epson inkjet printer from there. The RIP will also produce a dot for dot PDF soft proof of the file if we want to do it.

If that sounds like what you need to do, contact me via PM and I can give you more info. I'll be glad to talk to you about it and see if it will do what you want.
 
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