Taking My Rampage Away

Ro

Member
I'm just a lowly prepress operator ... been using Rampage for over 10 years ... love, love, love it!
Owner informed us yesterday that they are looking into something else because Rampage (1) forces you to rerip whole sigs when updating one page only so press is waiting too long for plates, and (2) Rampage screening is causing issues on press with flesh tones. Can anyone shed any light on these "issues" that might help me better understand this? I just want to be sure the big bosses are getting accurate info. And I can't let Rampage go without a fight!

Ro (sniff)
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

Change your workflow and use FPO's. Then you only have to rerip the page with changes. No idea about the skin tones but if everything is calibrated I'd have to say someone is feeding them BS to sell a new system. No idea what your running RAMpage on but the new Intel's fly though ripping...
Maybe instead of switching systems you can upgrade what you now have.
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

We do use FPOs in our workflow. And our files do rip quickly. But once it gets to the plateroom the shooter seems to crunch on it when sending for plates. Maybe that machine needs updating(?)
As for the calibrating, I wish I knew more because I don't have a lot of confidence in our prepress manager.
It's very frustrating. I can tell us operators will have no input in their final decisions.
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

Ah yes that could be it. My shooter is a Dual core and I have no slowdowns on it. A Gigabit network is also a plus...
Sucks not having control tho, glad I run the whole show here, so I never have to put up with the kind of stuff your dealing with. Good luck.
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

Did your boss mention what is the new system that may replace Rampage?

What Rampage version are you running?
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

They mentioned a Heidelberg system (?).
We're running Rampage 10.5
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

Hi Ro,

I was just looking at Rampage's website and it seems capable of doing what you're looking for:

+*Page independence speeds correction cycles*+
+At the last minute, you can drop in a revised page, and Rampage will process it and strip it into place automatically.+

Is this it or is this is a separate feature?

Hope this helps!
Jon Morgan
Hopkins Printing
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

Jon,
I checked out the Rampage website. That does sound like what we'd need. But I'm not clear if that's something that only pertains to JDF workflow. We do not use JDF. (Although I'm wondering if we should.) Rampage is having a webinar tomorrow that I'm hoping to sit in on. Maybe I can get some answers then. The real issue, which happens to be the one I have the least amount of knowledge in, is the screening issue. There have been many times when groups of the big guys have spent hours testing screens on press. The prepress operators were not involved or aware, for that matter, of the details. It's all so very frustrating.
If I get any help from the webinar I'll let you all know.
Thanks!
Ro
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

> {quote:title=Ro wrote:}{quote}
> The real issue, which happens to be the one I have the least amount of knowledge in, is the screening issue.

Hi Ro,

Can you expand on the issue you are having with flesh tones? What screening technology is causing the issue? Are you using standard screen angles for colors? Which line screen?

Cheers,
Jon :)
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

I am running C@15, M@45, Y@0 and K @75 and I have no issues with flesh tones using RCS dots in Rampage 10.5
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

It has a lot to do with the dot type / shape, as well as relative screen frequency - but running yellow at 0 is very effective at eliminating moire.
I ran - C165 M45 Y0 K105 for years, and years with no moire. Never, not once.
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

You can purchase screening from other companies to use with Rampage. We have gone to about 80% stochastic and use Fuji's Taffeta and CoRes screening package. Hope this helps.

Jeff
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

What type of plate or film setter are you going out to. Is the file being sent through another companies tiff catcher. Agfa and Creo devices typically have another box in between their output devices and Rampages shooter.

JM
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

One reason that the shooter may take a long time to crunch the plate is when the output resolution of the imposed flat is different than the resolution of the output device. If this is the case then the shooter needs to "scale" the plate before output. This can increase output time fourfold depending on your processor. Eg. if your platesetter is 2540 dpi, don't rip your pages and flats at 2400!
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

This is good one. It may be your case. I am 2438 all the way in Rampage outputting to Javelin.
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

Hi

You may have figured your issues out already. If not, have you tried calling Rampage Tech support?
They are very helpful and I'm sure they want to keep your business.
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

Jeff (and everyone else who responded),
All the suggestions and comments were very helpful. It seems it was enough to get the ball rolling on looking into options that might just work keeping Rampage. (yippee!!) Today we are starting some testing using Fuji's CoRes Screening. Next week it looks like the Rampage guys are coming in. Emails went around among the managers/bosses allowing us to find out what we can. Thanks to everyone!! Wish us luck!!!

:)
Ro
 
Re: Taking My Rampage Away

I'm glad they at least listened. I'm a bit late coming in on this but your IS being fed a ton of BS by the german guys. If your using FPOs then when you rip your imposition your only ripping the marks and color bars. It's placing pre ripped page data into the imposed file if you will. Thus you can on your imposed flat lower the rip resolution to 1200dpi to speed that up.

The problem with a slow down when it comes to making plates sounds more like a problem with the setter than the workflow and I'd bet any other front end attached to it would have the same issue.

FYI, the heidelberg system is PDF based and not a single page workflow. While signastation is a pretty slick imposition app, in the end your making a giant PDF to send off to your imagesetter for ripping. Make a change to one page and you have to send the entire flat again. While it is fast, the system I work on has all new PCs and isn't any faster than my old 9.4 RAMpage running on Intel Pro processors.
 

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