Are there any free rips out there

Hi all, I recently purchased a large format printer, are there any free rips out there? I'm quite new to printing, thanks

 

nothing is free in printing mate, especially rips.. so im afraid no if you need a rip you need to pay for them. they are not cheap but depending on how serious you are we all have at least one and use one...

 

thanks for the reply, I didnt imagine there would be but if you don't ask you'll never know!

 

It would be neat if there were a free RIP that you could install on your own hardware.
RIP hardware is very expensive for the CPU / memory / disk that you get, especially if you want fast. Probably 2x to 3x market value for the hardware itself.
But there's profit in the software+hardware bundle. It also allows providing quality at a slower speed as the entry-level and then making better profit from those who are running more jobs and need faster and who can presumably pay more out of their own profit.
I haven't seen a good free or open source RIP project yet. For one thing, most RIPs are probably sold bundled with printers; very few are probably added later by the customer where freedom of choice would come into play. With the bundled, there is the issue of support, who provides it, how long is it in place, etc.

 

Thanks for the response xfactor, this is probably something i should have looked into a bit more before purchasing my printer. You seem to have good knowledge on the subject and i am thankful of u sharing it.