Prepressforums.com

deefer · #1 (**permalink**) 10-07-2004, 01:28 PM

Okay, lemme just atart by saying I'm learning to hate imagesetters.

Here's the problem. I just started at a shop about a month ago. We have a pantherplus 46 imagesetter. Apparently, in the past, there was a problem with the cyan plate not registering with the rest of the plates, but it only happened when outputting from quark. Every other plate registered, cyan was a little out. Any other software, seps were fine. Now, it seems it happens with output from any software. I've encountered similar problems with an agfa imageseter in the past, but it seemed to be film stretching when the imagesetter sat for awhile. the first plate would be out of register, but after that they were fine for the day. Has anyone else encountered this?? any suggestions?

DCurry · #2 (**permalink**) 10-07-2004, 04:40 PM

I seem to remember several years ago we would occasionally have registration issues on our Dolev 800V, an 8-up Scitex imagesetter. Couldn't link it to any particular software because everythin was ripped on PSM first, but there was a setting to output the film as Flats. This would put all the cyans on 1 sheet of film, then all the magentas, then yellows, etc. It worked because each separation of each page landed in the same position of the sheet, rather than having all 4 seps of one page on the sheet.

We never did figure out what caused the problem in the first place - it just came and went (it was pretty rare, luckily.)

ajr · #3 (**permalink**) 10-07-2004, 11:30 PM

Is it a capstan imagesetter? On our old ECRM 30 (long time ago) we had registration problems all the time, the cyan was the first colour that imaged, we got round it by feeding a length of film first and changed the order of separation so the yellow went through first. If that was out it wouldn't show as much.

Lammy · #4 (**permalink**) 10-08-2004, 10:50 AM

If it's a capstan, feed some film into the take up first. About 10" This will even the tension across the image area between the rollers.

If it's a drum, check the humidity/ temp in the room. We have an Avantra 30, we only have fit issues when it's cold and the air dries out. From what we can figure the plastic film sliding across a cold steel drum is causing static and making it lift.