Profiling the Epson SureColor SC-S70600 (10 colour and 8 colours) Here is some guide lines on how to profile the Epson SureColor SC-S70600 which is one of the new range of solvent printers from Epson. It is fast and has very high print quality, and it is actually quite easy to profile in contone mode either CMYK or RGB. The difference between the 8 colour and 10 colour printers is that the 8 colours does not have white and metallic, otherwise they are the same and the profiling is the same. The templates are divided into vinyl, banner and transparent media. Vinyl and transparent are divided into indoor and outdoor templates. The banner is by definition always outdoor. The difference between outdoor and indoor is that Orange colour is not used with outdoor print because it is not so lightfast as the other colours. There are 4 outdoor vinyl templates with speed from 7.1 m2/h to 56 m2/h. There are 3 indoor vinyl profiles with speed from 7.1 m2/h to 28 m2/h. There are 2 banner templates with 18 m2/h and 28 m2/h. For transparent there are 2 templates for both indoor and outdoor with 7.1 m2/h and 14 m2/h. White and metallic is a different story. Profiling For vinyl and transparent open either outdoor or indoor templates, dependant on the application for which you are profiling. For outdoor vinyl normally do not select highest speed (Draft) except of course if you really need it and can live with the slightly lower quality. Fill in the Info page in the normal way (you can open one of the existing profiles to see how it is done), do not make any changes on the Options page. Print modes The next page is the Print Modes page and there are many print modes, so let us take them one by one. You may notice that in some of the print modes you can select Printer. This means that the setting in the printer will be used. I prefer to use the setting from the Rip, because you do not always know how the printer has been set up, and it is easier to control everything from the Rip. Template dependant print modes
Resolution is locked and must never be changed. Custom media Custom media is used when the user uses custom media on the printer and it must never be changed here, not the number or the tickmark. Profile dependant print modes The next 10 print modes determine the density or the amount of ink for each colour, and it is used instead of the normal single ink limit. The default value is 1024 and the range is from 128 to 8192, but I will recommend that you start with 820. If you have profiled the Surecolor SC S30600 with the same media, it is a good starting point to set the density to 80% for this printer. How to set the values (set the same value for all 8 normal colours) is a bit of trial and error. Like all other printers the print should be dry and not sticky when it reaches the floor or the take up, and the colours should not float or look patchy. I normally print Float Test.PS, which is in the image folder, as test print. It is relative easy to get an idea if the print will dry before reaching take up, If not reduce the density by for example 10% and try again. To a degree this goes hand in hand with the temperature settings. As you can see the density values are locked, leave them locked because the values should not be changed after the profile has been made because it will change the colours. Feed Adjustment and Paper Thickness are to a degree dependant on each other. First set the thickness of the media as correct as possible.
The Feed Adjustment is used to set how much the media is feed for each pass, if it is too low you can get dark bands and if it is too high you can get white bands especially at higher speeds. The best way to find the Feed Adjustment is to print a 1 meter long line, measure it very precise, and the difference (in tenth of millimetre) between the measurement and 1 meter is the Feed Adjustment. Example: you measure 1002.5mm, the Feed correction is then -25 (minus because the print was too long). Feed Correction and Thickness are locked and should remain so just like Density. For the highest speed (Draft) it looks as the Feed Adjustment is different (or more critical) that for the 3 other speeds, so measure it separately. Media dependant print modes Vacuum Intensity goes from 168% to 0%. Use a higher value if the media has a tendency to curl or not be flat, and decrease it if the media has a tendency to glue to the platen. Platen Gap has 3 settings Middle 1.5mm, Large 2mm and Largest 2.5mm. For normal media with a thickness of 0.2 to 0.3mm use Middle, and for thicker media use Large. For cloth, fabric and canvas always use at least Largest otherwise you may get clogging of nozzles. If the print head touches the media during printing either increase Vacuum Intensity or Platen Gap (or both). These 4 print modes are used to maintain print quality without banding. The first determines how often the printer checks the tension of the media, the normal setting is On(standard) where it checks for every 5 meters. I will recommend you set Roll Tension Setting to On (each page), unless you are printing very long, otherwise you may get banding at the beginning of the print. The Roll Tension Level range is from 0 to 40 (0 to 2Kg). A level of 10-20 is usually fine. Notice that if you change Roll Tension Level, you may have to readjust Feed Adjust. The last one - Paper Feed Speed - determines how fast the paper is feed for each pass and it can be quite critical. For heavy rolls of media and high speed printing always set it to Low (which is default in the templates). Otherwise it is almost impossible to maintain media feed without banding.
Media Drying print modes The heaters of course work hand in hand with Density to make sure the media is dry. I would normally use the setting above. Reduce them if the media bugles too much or if it gets too soft. Increase to reduce dry time. The blower is an option on the printer and you normally should get away without using it. If you are printing High Speed (56m2/hour) however you should use it, otherwise it is almost impossible to dry the media before it reaches the take up or floor. Scan Dry Time sets the minimum time a pass will take. For Scan Dry Time to have any notable effect it must be somewhat longer that a normal pass, maybe 1 to 1.5 seconds. Set Page Dry Time if you need extra dry time at the end of a print job. Misc print modes If you set Print Direction to Uni-Directional you may get a slightly better print quality, but maybe more important it is a good way to give extra dry time. If you set Multi-Strike Printing On, you should also set Print Direction to Uni-Directional, this is because of the construction of the print head. If you are not using Multi Strike it may be a good idea to lock it to Off. A better approach that using Multi-Strike could be to increase Density and maybe switch to Unidirectional.
Here you can change the top margin. The hard margin is about 5mm so the first 5mm you increase Top Margin with will be ignored. If you set the Top Margin to 12mm then the top margin on the printer will be 12mm (and not 5+12mm). With this printmode you can move the right margin, up to about 800mm. Feed Adjustment Offset is for the end user if there are variations from printer to printer in Feed Adjustment. The range is from -70 to +70. Here you can determine if you want the carriage to move only the width of the image when printing or the whole printer width. The advantage of moving the whole printer width is that each pass will always take the same time independent of media width and image width. But of course the print time is increased because of the extra carriage movement. Here you can set to the printer to feed the media after a job so you can see the print, and either rewind or not before next print. Here you can set the speed with which the media is feed backwards when using repetitive print. Printer dependant print modes
The last two print modes depends on the printer. In this case the Colorspace is CMYK meaning we are creating a CMYK ICC profile. Dither Type is Contone meaning we are using an Epson library for rasterisation etc. These two must never be changed. Single Ink Limit etc. Do not do Single Ink Limit, Linearization or Total Ink Limit. As you can see on the templates they are already green ticked. ICC Files All which is left now is to print the ICC profile patches and create the ICC profile. I will recommend you use a fair amount of patches 1200-2000. If you make a CMYK profile you should reduce the total amount of ink to 320-340%. White and Metallic You do not have to make separate ICC profiles for the templates for White and Metallic. Testing has shown that the ICC profiles used in Quality mode should be used there. Testing etc. All which is left now is testing. Use a couple of images and preferably images you know well. If you are satisfied with the result then remember to green tick all and also click on Date Stamp. Save the profile and it is ready to be used. Media short name If you use Custom media on the printer, we need a very short media name in the profile. Unfortunately at the moment we cannot put that name in the profile in the Colour module, but have to do it manually. So open the SCP file and in the job section enter the following: <media_short_name>your short name</media_short_name> You can open a profile and see how it is done. Be careful that the syntax is correct, open the profile in colour to check. Quick and dirty profile If you are unsure about all the Print Modes set Density to 720 and create the ICC profile, this will work with most vinyl and banners. Then increase or decrease Feed Correction if you get banding when doing a test print.
What is the best vinyl? The best vinyls are polymeric, but also the most expensive, they have a product lifespan of typical 7 years (this does not mean that the print will last 7 years). The cheaper alternative is monomeric vinyl with a lifespan of up to 3 years. Polymeric vinyl is much easier to profile, you can print faster than you can on monomeric without the ink create patches. Picture 2 is typical for monomeric vinyl at relative high print speed. Backlit media Backlit media are quite difficult to profile, often you get disappointed that the colours are not punchy enough. Try to increase density, but not so much that you get over inking. You might even risk for some media that the more you increase Density the lighter the print becomes. The secret behind good backlit prints is the right media, and then profile it as backlit with a transmisive spectrophotometer. What to look after Here are 3 pictures of the same print on solvent paper, but printed at different speeds. Ignore the differences in colour, it is because of the photograph process. The original size of the patches are 2x2cm. You must understand that the print quality you see here is a combination of that specific media and the print speed. On other media the print quality may be much better or maybe worse. These examples just shows what to look after when profiling. Picture1: HQ and Bi-directional. It is very uniform, it is perfect. Picture 2: Prod1 and Bi-directional. The first thing you notice is that it is much more coarse, the individual dots has combined into patches (orange skin). You can also see feed banding, a thin darker line, there are 3 of them on the picture. There is also bi-directional banding, broad bands where the ink patches look different. If you look at it the original from a distance of 1 meter, then I don t think you will see the ink patches and feed banding, but properly the bi-directional banding. At a distance of 2 meters it will properly look fine. Picture 3: Prod1 and Uni-directional. Here the print is still coarse, but all banding has disappeared.
Picture1 Picture 2
Picture3