variable printing with tray selection

[pspdfppdfxhd]

I really think this is really out of our capabilty here but...

has anyone ever sent a variable job to a digital printer that will contain  data to select, for example, record A picks up from tray 1, record B picks up from tray 2 and so on.

there could be like 4,000 in tray 1 and 5000 in tray 2 but have to print in order for postal walk delivery.

We are using a Konica bizhub 6500 with the Creo rip.

[t-pat]

are you doing different trays because you are doing different stock or shells or something?

[pspdfppdfxhd]

Yes, like 4 versions of the same basic letter (though there are subtle differences) that have to be picked up in order once sorted for the post office. In Canada they are sorted by a software that arranges them in order for the postal walks.The tray printing order would end up being random like 1,3,2,4,1,3,3,4,2,4,4 and so on.

[t-pat]

We do stuff like this regularly. We would make 4 presorted lists and run them on the different shells separately. Customer does not get the benefit of the cost savings for one sort.

If it was a small enough job and it was all the same stock, we would use a layer visibility trigger based on some field in the data on the base art and run it all inline, base art and imprint all on a color digital press. Have not found a way to trigger different trays but not sure we've tried really hard. We're using xmpie and various digital presses, some with Spire rip, some with no rip.

HTH

[Skryber]

We do it on our Xerox for adding dividers in spec books and such. We print to a unix based rip using acrobat print drivers and all the settings to do so are in there. I found that the Creo rip on our Bizhub would not do what you told it to do. Even impositions, it would look exactly like you have it set up in your preview and it would shoot out something FUBAR. I had to impose everything in Indy for that damn machine.

[t-pat]

We can tell our rips to pull from a particular tray and print or not print on that sheet or range, but it is entirely based on page numbers, not any content in the file.

[delooch]

im curious how you would trigger the rip/VDP application to pull stock from a separate drawer by a VDP trigger, such as pspdfppdfx was asking (i think thats what he was asking)

i can easily designate or specify which pages pull from where, but thats manually, not via vdp data...

[gnubler]

Even impositions, it would look exactly like you have it set up in your preview and it would shoot out something FUBAR. I had to impose everything in Indy for that damn machine.

Wow, that never happens to me. 

[Skryber]

Only on a Creo Rip for me.

[gnubler]

It just happened last week. Tried like 8 diff impo settings. The ones that previewed right came out wrong and the ones that previewed wrong came out wrong. I gave up and used FusionPro.

[Joe]

It just happened last week. Tried like 8 diff impo settings. The ones that previewed right came out wrong and the ones that previewed wrong came out wrong. I gave up and used FusionPro.

Hey, it's consistent. What more could you ask for?

[gnubler]

Yes, consistently wrong. Like my customers' files or printing in general.

[youston]

In XMPie there's a way to use dynamic media selection based upon a trigger in the data, but I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to pull it off because I never had cause to learn it. XMPie has a great google group for this sort of thing, if that's what you're using.

Can't speak to any of the other VDP packages out there, though.

Sounds like a tech support call is in order.

It just happened last week. Tried like 8 diff impo settings. The ones that previewed right came out wrong and the ones that previewed wrong came out wrong. I gave up and used FusionPro.

I've been using FP for a little over 2 months now (68 days, to be precise). I absolutely loathe it. It's like VDP made by Tonka.

[DigiCorn]

Smart Board sorts different paper stock for us, even when using VDP (from FP)

[t-pat]

In XMPie there's a way to use dynamic media selection based upon a trigger in the data, but I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to pull it off

It probably has to be output in the vps file format from xmpie, which we seem to have given up on. That or we didn't get the license for it. It rarely comes up and I doubt we've lost a scrap of work because of it. I think the added complexity cancels out any potential postage savings.