It appears they're installing a Xante Ilumina GS (http://www.xante.com/product-information/high-production-digital-envelope-press-plus/) inkjet envelope printer here in the next few days. And by "here" I mean right here - in the prep dept. And we'll be operating the damned thing. Greeeeaaaaat.
Anybody have one of these little beasts and have any words of encouragement for me? PLEASE?? :banghead:
Quote from: Slappy on October 08, 2012, 11:48:06 AMIt appears they're installing a Xante Ilumina GS (http://www.xante.com/product-information/high-production-digital-envelope-press-plus/) inkjet envelope printer here in the next few days. And by "here" I mean right here - in the prep dept. And we'll be operating the damned thing. Greeeeaaaaat.
Anybody have one of these little beasts and have any words of encouragement for me? PLEASE?? :banghead:
we have a laser envelope printer that looks very similar, it is basically a Xerox 7400 with an envelope feeder and some crappy software. We haven't been running nearly as many envelopes on our GTO since getting that.
looks like yours is laser as well, not inkjet.
Huh, well that's Lie #1 then! Many more to follow I'm sure.
actually the print engine looks identical, the only differences I see are the feeder and delivery, ours is configured differently. The thing is a xerox 7400 but they've got to have bastard consumables, we have a 7400 and they don't take the same toner, or imaging units, the chip is different and it won't read them.
all in all though it isn't terrible. The rip blows ass though, for some reason you can't send a page range. This sucks for when we do mailings on it because the image position setup is terrible on it. yours hopefully has a better front end.
So, that happened Friday morning. Into early Friday afternoon. The installer had it all set up by the time I rolled in, doesn't take up much space fortunately. I have to say, it is one jury-rigged piece of machinery. As he was showing us all how to load it & adjust the feeder and the delivery belt thingy it just seemed very half-assed, but I guess it works as long as nobody nudges it. Luckily we have it tucked out of path of most people.
The print quality from what I've seen so far is - meh. It's a laser printer, plain & simple. I can't honestly believe it can replace our 2c press but maybe client expectations really have fallen so low I'll be wrong. Not real sure how good/bad the RIP is yet, we sent a few test jobs over and it was fine for basic setups. Oh, the one thing I do NOT like is that we have to create print presets in InDesign/Quark/Freehand for every single envelope size. You cannot just select it at print time, otherwise an A2 goes over as a Letter, as does a #10, a Monarch, etc. So my Print Preset Menu is going to be cluttered as shit. Not sure if there's a workaround to re-ordering them in CS6, even if there's a plug-in I have to buy.
I asked the installer about addressing inline and he's all "Oh yeah, it does it." Okay, show me on the RIP. "Oh, you have to do all that on the Mac end, this doesn't have anything built-in but it'll print them!" No shit, Sherlock. Couldn't tell us what formats the RIP accepts either or if every address in a 1500 name list would have to be individual PDFs. I'll poke around Monday, there's gotta be a faster way.
Yay for new hardware nobody has researched! :death:
Isn't that always the case? Salesman comes in, blows smoke up the higher-ups ass then you have some P.O.S. that you have to make work.
yeah ours looks like someone built it in their garage too, feeding is finicky. Rip is a joke, but it has one.
You'll need to buy special window envelopes if running those, or you'll melt the windows in the fuser too.
And of course if you're printing envelopes intended for lasering later, you can't. It'll re-fuse.
Quote from: Slappy on October 08, 2012, 11:48:06 AMIt appears they're installing a Xante Ilumina GS (http://www.xante.com/product-information/high-production-digital-envelope-press-plus/) inkjet envelope printer here in the next few days. And by "here" I mean right here - in the prep dept. And we'll be operating the damned thing. Greeeeaaaaat.
Anybody have one of these little beasts and have any words of encouragement for me? PLEASE?? :banghead:
Can't help you. I am doing the same thing, but on a Xerox 4110.
Quote from: Slappy on October 08, 2012, 11:48:06 AMIt appears they're installing a Xante Ilumina GS (http://www.xante.com/product-information/high-production-digital-envelope-press-plus/) inkjet envelope printer here in the next few days. And by "here" I mean right here - in the prep dept. And we'll be operating the damned thing. Greeeeaaaaat.
Anybody have one of these little beasts and have any words of encouragement for me? PLEASE?? :banghead:
yeah, ill trade you for my RISO anyday.
we have a Xante in our copy dept
I don't like it, I always print from pdf
you have to be careful of the color profile
it seems to switch from no color management to postscript or something
I always check after I have printed to the xante
The only thing it is good for is the 4 color envelopes
that aren't worth printing IMO
Quote from: Tracy on October 15, 2012, 01:44:40 PMwe have a Xante in our copy dept
I don't like it, I always print from pdf
you have to be careful of the color profile
it seems to switch from no color management to postscript or something
I always check after I have printed to the xante
The only thing it is good for is the 4 color envelopes
that aren't worth printing IMO
Agree with you on that - BUT - before we got ours probably half the jobs we printed on our GTO were 2 and 4 color envelopes. Now the percentage is like nearly zero. We dropped a shift on that press and are not hiring for that shift anytime soon.
Quote from: Tracy on October 15, 2012, 01:44:40 PMaren't worth printing IMO
what is? except paychecks
Quote from: DigiCorn on October 15, 2012, 02:17:12 PMQuote from: Tracy on October 15, 2012, 01:44:40 PMaren't worth printing IMO
what is? except paychecks
You still get printed paychecks? How 19990's... :tongue:
It's in the future, after the internet collapses and things are actually printed on paper again.
Quote from: Tracy on October 15, 2012, 01:44:40 PMThe only thing it is good for is the 4 color envelopes
that aren't worth printing IMO
That's all they bought it to do, so hopefully it won't suck too bad at it. I still see no info on how to send VDP jobs over, say for a merged address kind of match mailing.
we make pdfs with a page for each record, and send that. In reverse order.
Quote from: t-pat on October 15, 2012, 03:04:59 PMwe make pdfs with a page for each record, and send that. In reverse order.
Ah, okay. That seems - cumbersome. But wtf do I know? :shoots_self:
Quote from: Slappy on October 15, 2012, 03:58:23 PMQuote from: t-pat on October 15, 2012, 03:04:59 PMwe make pdfs with a page for each record, and send that. In reverse order.
Ah, okay. That seems - cumbersome. But wtf do I know? :shoots_self:
to clarify, we use xmpie, and we output the entire list and make one pdf with many pages. Since the rip on ours sucks nutz we then extract the first page of this multiple page pdf and call it "setup" for the operator to use to get the whole rigged mess in position. It doesn't allow sending a page range or "current page" for some reason - and this is an embedded Fiery on the device. POS.
Yeah, we've got the XMPie too, although for some reason the Prep Mgr keeps stalling me when I say I want to get familiar with it. Our RIP on the Xante is called iQueue (how fuckin' original) and it doesn't seem to have many features either. I think I'll do an InDesign Merged PDF of a few hundred records & see how it handles that.
Quote from: Slappy on October 16, 2012, 12:10:51 PMYeah, we've got the XMPie too, although for some reason the Prep Mgr keeps stalling me when I say I want to get familiar with it. Our RIP on the Xante is called iQueue (how fuckin' original) and it doesn't seem to have many features either. I think I'll do an InDesign Merged PDF of a few hundred records & see how it handles that.
You'll probably have to output them in reverse order if you have a presort. Who knows?
Quote from: Slappy on October 16, 2012, 12:10:51 PMYeah, we've got the XMPie too, although for some reason the Prep Mgr keeps stalling me when I say I want to get familiar with it. Our RIP on the Xante is called iQueue (how fuckin' original) and it doesn't seem to have many features either. I think I'll do an InDesign Merged PDF of a few hundred records & see how it handles that.
Have the same RIP on my Illumina DPP (POS) and I always end up making a multiple page PDF file and sending it...till the HD fills up and crashes in the middle of the run. Then I go back, delete the pages it has run and start again....I have felt like throwing this thing out the window many times...doing that as we speak for the third time this run :deadhorse:
Hrm, you're not exactly filling me with confidence for this fantastic new Business Opportunity!
These toy presses have limitations, all of them. Sell the work right and don't exceed the machine's limitations too much and it'll be ok.
Quote from: t-pat on October 16, 2012, 01:37:42 PMQuote from: Slappy on October 16, 2012, 12:10:51 PMYeah, we've got the XMPie too, although for some reason the Prep Mgr keeps stalling me when I say I want to get familiar with it. Our RIP on the Xante is called iQueue (how fuckin' original) and it doesn't seem to have many features either. I think I'll do an InDesign Merged PDF of a few hundred records & see how it handles that.
You'll probably have to output them in reverse order if you have a presort. Who knows?
I did a small test run last night on some #10 envelopes from XM Pie. How do I reverse the PDF printing order though?
Ahhhh, in the Acrobat options - I see.
we do it in command workstation but yeah acrobat if that's what you're sending it from
My customers do it in Adobe. Or Microsoft. :laugh:
Quote from: t-pat on October 18, 2012, 06:12:24 PMwe do it in command workstation but yeah acrobat if that's what you're sending it from
Since it's Xante and not Xerox, I don't think it has Command Workstation access. Once I get into XM Pie a little more I bet there's a way to generate the file in reverse.
Oh, and if they think this machine can run un-attended – ain't happening. I had to crank out 450 #10s Friday, for a waiting driver of course, and when I stepped away to do something on my Mac for a minute, the envelopes got just a
little skewed & about 100 of them were so out of square they were trash.
Quote from: Slappy on October 20, 2012, 09:15:43 PMQuote from: t-pat on October 18, 2012, 06:12:24 PMwe do it in command workstation but yeah acrobat if that's what you're sending it from
Since it's Xante and not Xerox, I don't think it has Command Workstation access. Once I get into XM Pie a little more I bet there's a way to generate the file in reverse.
Oh, and if they think this machine can run un-attended – ain't happening. I had to crank out 450 #10s Friday, for a waiting driver of course, and when I stepped away to do something on my Mac for a minute, the envelopes got just a little skewed & about 100 of them were so out of square they were trash.
ours isn't xerox either, it is "made" by PSI. They're both a xerox engine, but the rest of the rollercoaster ride for the envelopes and the firmware are not.
Yeah, it doesn't run unattended. Never seen envelopes that did, not on a press either.
Quote from: Slappy on October 20, 2012, 09:15:43 PMI had to crank out 450 #10s Friday, for a waiting driver of course, and when I stepped away to do something on my Mac for a minute, the envelopes got just a little skewed & about 100 of them were so out of square they were trash.
Let me guess...4:42pm on a Friday, someone "forgot" about the job and then said "here, just go print these before you leave"...an hour later you're raging and picking jammed envelopes out of a machine. Sounds normal.
Oh, it's not that anybody "forgot" they just don't give a shit about promising things like that. So yah, basically the same as any other place. :shoots_self: