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Do you offer transfer printing in your business? If your answer is yes or you are thinking of starting, then you should seriously consider using a transfer RIP. It is not essential, but you will reap the benefits many times over. Here Peter Wright, managing director of Amaya Sales UK, explains why.
The main features that will benefit your business are:
- Rasterising of the design.
- White toner controls.
- Colour management controls.
- Cost calculation.
Rasterisation
Rasterisation is a way of placing small holes in the image which makes it more durable, washable, while producing better colours and providing a unique look to the design. The rasterisation of images is one of the most important features of the transfer RIP software.
Rasterisation removes the negative or positive parts of the image which are not required when printing on a light or dark coloured garments. A rasterised image keeps the parts of the image which are required for an image to be recognisable either on light or dark coloured garments or surfaces.
Rasterised images not only create a unique look, but they also increase the washability, durability, while saving you toner and providing a softer touch to designs.
Rasterised images can be washed better than full scale designs or non-rasterised images, this is because the image is broken up into small pieces or objects. This allows the high-water pressure – when washing the garment – to pass through. Excellent results were especially achieved with polyester fabrics that were washed more than 40 times at 40°C without losing image quality.
Depending on the image being rasterised, you can save up to 25% on your overall toner costs.
If you have a lot of white in your image, then less toner is removed, but if your image has a lot of dark areas, then more toner is removed from the image, saving you this toner cost. The light to dark shading or gradient areas of an image are replaced with dots in various sizes and distance between them. This process generates the gradient-like effect in the image. The tiny dots are blended into smooth tones by the human eye. To our eyes it looks like a gradient, but on closer inspection, we are looking at small dots. Those small dots are the main reason, why rasterised images are softer with higher washability.
One of the most talked about issues in the heat transfer paper industry is to do with the washability of the transfer papers. Non-rasterised images do not have good washability because these images work against the high water pressure.
Rasterised images have lots of holes across the whole design – as they are washed, the image works with the high water pressure, rather than against it, by allowing this water to pass through the garment. This prevents images from being destroyed and therefore increasing the washability of the image.
White toner controls
White toner controls allow you to control how much white toner is placed on the design. By finely tuning the white toner amount for each design, not only will you print better colours, increase durability and washability, while producing a much softer touch to the design, but this feature also saves you toner.
Fill up spot up to: Controls how much of the image is covered with white toner (Standard value is 150%).
Multiply spot by: Controls how thick or thin the fill up spot value (defined above) is.
Under filling: Removes white outlines which appear on the edge of low resolution pixel images.
Partial transparency: Lets you print transparencies in your images.
Colour Management Controls
Colour management controls are very powerful features for lowering overall toner costs, increasing the durability and wash ability as well as producing a much softer touch to the transfer.
Selective colour correction allows you to replace a selected colour with a chosen colour. It is the perfect solution for printing the same image on different coloured garments and applications.
Image editing controls and individual gamma colour corrections (CMYK). There are various colour controls for performing simple image changes to your desired look. If the colours are not bright enough, simply use the brightness, contrast, saturation, hue or individual colour controls.
The colour removal feature is a great for removing colours from the image. For example, when transferring to a black garment, you do not need to print the black parts of the image as those parts come from the garment colour, saving a great deal of toner.
The background preview feature is a great way to see how your image would look like on various substrate colours.
Cost calculation
The calculation feature allows you to calculate your toner and consumable costs before you send the job to print.
By using the information provided by OKI data such as, the toner cartridge, image drum, fuser unit, transfer belt and waste toner values – you can calculate the total price of one single sheet of paper.
I hope this gives you a good insight into how much time and money you can save with good RIP software.
