colour management challenges

I work in the art dept of a screen printing and large format digital print shop. Over the past few years we have acquired a few new machines and 2 in particular are fast becoming our main work horses. These are the Oce Arizona 250 and 350 flatbed UV printers.

Cut to the chase: we are spending too much time getting the colour dialed just right. Back in the day when we only had Roland aqueous printers we did colour by eye on a job to job basis. This is no longer cutting it.

I am no expert but from everything I have read I presume these printers need to be calibrated with a photo spectrometer. As well my monitor should be calibrated as well. We have the "Eye One" spectrometer and software but have yet to implement it in our work flow.

As well as the 2 Oce's we have Roland Eco Sol roll fed printers (XJ740) and a Roland XJ1000 full on solvent machine. These Rolands do not seem to have the same issues as the Oce's but the Oce's are great once we finally get colour dialed because of their flat bed (media thickness, any substrate etc.).

Any advice from anyone who has been through this would greatly be appreciated. We are Mac based with Onyx PC based rip stations on the Oce's.

 

Excellent to see some real workflows in the screenprint cross large format alot of companies don't give a crap.

Any machine should be calibrated regularly as alot of factors change the characteristics of the output device. ie climate, age, ink inconstancy.
The Eye one is a nice affordable spectrophotometer a must buy if you dont have one. Onyx will allow you to calibrate the device to each stock I do recommend doing this (you need to calibrate each stock for the white point).
The eye one is around $1500us Onyx has everything you need to get started use media manager to calibrate your device. Once you have taken this step purchase monaco profiler, this will allow you to build ICC's and calibrate your monitor. This software comes with both mac and pc.

 

a couple more questions;

what is your opinion of the BenQ 24" LCD monitor? Adequate or will it have to be replaced?

Should I be ditching the profiles (like SWOP) that come with my customers files and going with no ICC profiles until I am able to generate my own? When I print from Adobe App's I choose Sheetfed Coated v2 with the default rendering intent.

 

The Benq 24 is no good for soft proofing if you are serious about soft proofing have a look at the Eizo ColorEdge CG241W monitor.

I don't recommend changing your workflow so dramatically. Think of colour management as input and output.
Your customers files are input profiles this is actually important to understand your customers workflow and how that can fit into yours ie if they have a vibrant blue you can understand what they were trying to achieve and you have a better chance of replicating it to output.

I Believe we should all follow the ISO coated v2 profile. Ultimately this is a choice you need to make that best fits your company.

Your Focus should be your output profiles not the input once you have that right then asses your input.