Prepress Op near Baltimore, MD

[tapdn]

One more Bono-shot and I'm putting you on ignore, Joe. Wait - is it possible to ignore a mod?

...sure, we all do.  :laugh:

[Joe]

One more Bono-shot and I'm putting you on ignore, Joe. Wait - is it possible to ignore a mod?

...sure, we all do.  :laugh:

ain't it the truth???!!! :tongue:

[DCurry]

Thanks for all the congrats, everyone. I'm very excited about the job (though I'll be leaving my newly acquired yet much beloved Prinergy behind, at least for now).

New place uses some flavor of Xitron rip sending to a Presstek platesetter, though I'm told they don't love it and may be open to changing it down the road.

[Slappy]

Good goin' Dan!  :cool:

We had a few layoffs recently, I may reach out to those guys & see if anybody is interested. We're practically the same setup I think, so at least they'd be easy hires. I'll PM you for contact info if I get anything.

[Santa]

Ooh a Dimension Platesetter.......your new four letter word will be "zone balancing."   Glad to hear about the good news for you!!

[Slappy]

Is Dan still checking in on us, now that he has a cushy new Job? Just wondering how the final hiring went.

[DCurry]

Is Dan still checking in on us, now that he has a cushy new Job? Just wondering how the final hiring went.

I'm still here - in fact, I think you just replied to my other thread regarding variable marks in Preps.

Not as much time to frequent here as before (trying to look good!), but it IS a cushy job. 75% of our work is reprints, and 99% of the work comes from inhouse design team that set things up pretty decent. Awesome bennies, too!

[gnubler]

(trying to look good!)

With your assortment of fabulous hairstyles how can you NOT look good?

[Slappy]

Is Dan still checking in on us, now that he has a cushy new Job? Just wondering how the final hiring went.

I'm still here - in fact, I think you just replied to my other thread regarding variable marks in Preps.

Not as much time to frequent here as before (trying to look good!), but it IS a cushy job. 75% of our work is reprints, and 99% of the work comes from inhouse design team that set things up pretty decent. Awesome bennies, too!

Nice! I was kinda curious who you ended up hiring for the old place. Did my reference guy make the cut?

[DCurry]

Nice! I was kinda curious who you ended up hiring for the old place. Did my reference guy make the cut?

Nope - I don't think he got back to my boss in time. The 2 guys they hired, 1 seems really on the ball and 1 still has a lot to learn, but they're doing alright although I heard that lots of mistakes are getting to the press. I can PM you with their names and where they are from if you want.

[jimking]

Thanks for all the congrats, everyone. I'm very excited about the job (though I'll be leaving my newly acquired yet much beloved Prinergy behind, at least for now).

New place uses some flavor of Xitron rip sending to a Presstek platesetter, though I'm told they don't love it and may be open to changing it down the road.

DC, have you had a chance to experience the Xitron rip yet? If so what do you think?

[G_Town]

Thanks for all the congrats, everyone. I'm very excited about the job (though I'll be leaving my newly acquired yet much beloved Prinergy behind, at least for now).

New place uses some flavor of Xitron rip sending to a Presstek platesetter, though I'm told they don't love it and may be open to changing it down the road.

DC, have you had a chance to experience the Xitron rip yet? If so what do you think?

I used one for quite a few years not bad just seemed to have nagging moire issues from time to time.

[DCurry]

DC, have you had a chance to experience the Xitron rip yet? If so what do you think?

Well, I am not loving it, although it isn't bad. It may just be the way they have their workflow set up, but I feel like I am flying blind thru the whole thing - can't find anyplace to check/edit traps, just pretty much trusting that everything is sepping properly.

Here's the workflow as shown to me:

From InDesign (or whatever) print direct to the Xenith (from poking around, I can tell that this is really just generating a postscript and dumping it into a hotfolder). Then I go to the RipManager client software and after it is prechecked, I have to release it to process the pages. During that process it creates FPO placement files for Preps. So I create a new Preps job, add the FPO placement files, then print from Preps as separations to another hotfolder. Go back to RipManager again and it will automatically create TIFFs for the proofer, then I release it again to make it generate 1-bit tiffs for the platemaker. Once the job is approved, I release those files and they get converted to something the Presstek Dimension 800 can read (this seems to be a time-consuming process) and then I can plate the job.

Overall, it seems like it is pretty much dummy-proof, but like I said before there doesn't seem to be any places to change settings on the fly. However, it seems to work for us right now. They are unhappy with the platesetter and the overall bottlenecks of this workflow and are looking at Prinergy Evo coupled with a Trendsetter, but that deal is in grave danger due to our IT security concerns which cannot be overridden (we are a very secure company and with good reason.)

I am quite sure that a lot it may have to do with my lack of knowledge about how this RIP really should work, and I will learn more as time goes on.

On a side note, they never figured out how to back up their dummy impo proofs, so everything must be glued together by hand - not fun when you have 104pp perfect-bound book like we did my second week here. I will be addressing this before too long. We use EFI Colorproof XF to drive the Epson, so right now I'm poking around in there to see what things I made need to mess with to make this happen.

On the plus side, it is a great company and I was brought in to be a 1-man-prepress show, so I'll be able to shape things how I think they should run. For now I am learning what works and what doesn't so I can make intelligent decisions regarding how things should work.

[jimking]

DC, have you had a chance to experience the Xitron rip yet? If so what do you think?

Well, I am not loving it, although it isn't bad. It may just be the way they have their workflow set up, but I feel like I am flying blind thru the whole thing - can't find anyplace to check/edit traps, just pretty much trusting that everything is sepping properly.

Here's the workflow as shown to me:

From InDesign (or whatever) print direct to the Xenith (from poking around, I can tell that this is really just generating a postscript and dumping it into a hotfolder). Then I go to the RipManager client software and after it is prechecked, I have to release it to process the pages. During that process it creates FPO placement files for Preps. So I create a new Preps job, add the FPO placement files, then print from Preps as separations to another hotfolder. Go back to RipManager again and it will automatically create TIFFs for the proofer, then I release it again to make it generate 1-bit tiffs for the platemaker. Once the job is approved, I release those files and they get converted to something the Presstek Dimension 800 can read (this seems to be a time-consuming process) and then I can plate the job.

Overall, it seems like it is pretty much dummy-proof, but like I said before there doesn't seem to be any places to change settings on the fly. However, it seems to work for us right now. They are unhappy with the platesetter and the overall bottlenecks of this workflow and are looking at Prinergy Evo coupled with a Trendsetter, but that deal is in grave danger due to our IT security concerns which cannot be overridden (we are a very secure company and with good reason.)

I am quite sure that a lot it may have to do with my lack of knowledge about how this RIP really should work, and I will learn more as time goes on.

On a side note, they never figured out how to back up their dummy impo proofs, so everything must be glued together by hand - not fun when you have 104pp perfect-bound book like we did my second week here. I will be addressing this before too long. We use EFI Colorproof XF to drive the Epson, so right now I'm poking around in there to see what things I made need to mess with to make this happen.

On the plus side, it is a great company and I was brought in to be a 1-man-prepress show, so I'll be able to shape things how I think they should run. For now I am learning what works and what doesn't so I can make intelligent decisions regarding how things should work.

You'd think you'd be able to use those 1-bit tiffs for making proofs also, eliminating a step?

[Slappy]

Nice! I was kinda curious who you ended up hiring for the old place. Did my reference guy make the cut?

Nope - I don't think he got back to my boss in time. <snip> I can PM you with their names and where they are from if you want.

Huh, guess he wasn't all that excited about a job opportunity then. Sure, PM me the info, my curiosity is piqued.