They paint the surface with a light sensitive coating, expose it with the film, develop it to wash away the appropriate area, etch and repeat..... I was the guy who created the film (yes, old school film.....) as multi-level usually. Never done it digitally. If you are able to make film positives, just set them up as explained above or ask your diemaker what he needs to do it. The place we use now, still images with film but use an imagesetter now instead of a camera or vacuum frames. So, I guess if I had to do it now, I would just give them pdfs of solid black with the method described in my previous post.

I used to work for a diemaker and the way we did it was with four images. First level had all the levels, second had the next three deepest, third had the two deepest, and finally the deepest level on it's own. So, the metal was imaged and etched four seperate times, getting deeper with each etch.

Back when I was freelancing, I made up business cards with my services and handed them out whenever and wherever possible.  It was great for the shops that were busy occasionally to have some extra help but that didn't have enough work to hire more full-timers.  It is amazing how fast word gets around when they find you are reliable.

We have one trendsetter at the moment.  Another one is in the works mainly as a backup.  And yeah, we're a big shop.

I'd rather have a backup processor though, it has way more problems.

I used it for years in the last shop I worked for.  Loved it for ganging jobs.  I hate all the math required for Preps but I'm getting used to it.  Lucky I took machine shop in school, still have the decimal equivalents of common fractions in the old memory banks.

I rename the original file(s).   filenameOLD1.pdf, filenameOLD2.pdf, and so on, and so on, etc, etc, etc!!!

That's usually how it goes.

It keeps me in a job!!!

I've had to do it both ways as well.  Depending on if it was black/silver background or silver/black background.

...or which pressman was running it

Had the same problems with our FTP.  Ended up telling all the clients that any files uploaded had to be stuffed (preferably) or zipped.

Solved most of the problems.  Something to do with being a Linux server, I think???

Hey, where'd my "Kinkos" button go?

Then you get it back two days later....redone in Excel!