How to Print Spot Colors and Half-tones to and Epson printer without a RIP - Part 1 - Concerning RIPS

When I first bought my R1800 printer with FastRIP I paid approximately $1200.00 for it, with financing interest more like $4,500.00. *Cough*. I was told by my vendor that you cannot achieve a good enough black image without a RIP, which lays down enough of a “special” ink to completely block the UV light during exposure. As it turns out, I was either mislead, i.e. sold, or I was dealing with someone who didn’t have all the information.

Not only can you get clean, crisp images with excellent UV blockage, but you can do it without using the overpriced “special” ink!

More on halftones and spots later. Let’s talk about RIP software. RIPs are the same in any printing industry. They typically serve their purpose very well, but are extra-ordinarily overpriced. Very basically, without a detailed explanation, they take your image and run it through a process of extremely high resolution, which is then typically burned to some type of film. There are also photo-rips which serve the same purpose, but he end result is that a full color image is printed.

The same holds true for the screen printing industry. We have our own RIPS, many of which work amiably, but are either overpriced, overfeatured, or ridiculously complex. As in a lot of other industries, many of them require dongles, which can fail (like mine eventually did), or are just so bloated that it takes as many process cycles to keep them open, as it does for them to process an image.

PowerRIP is probably the cheapest coming in at $399 just for the software. However, for me the interface is a more confusing than is necessary. So it may be cheaper than most, and produce fine quality - but it isn’t bonehead proof, and it doesn’t come right out of the box ready to go. It will take quite a bit of getting used to. Probably the greatest thing about PowerRIP is the enormous selection of printers to choose from. You can use nearly any Epson Printer from the C-120 on up. If you get an R1400, which is Epson’s replacement for the 1280 series, you’ll be coming in at around $700.00.

I purchased my RIP combo, an R1800 with FastRIP for $1200. Up to now it has been a nightmare, and probably the most inconsistent tool I purchased from Ryonet. As a matter of fact they’ve all but shifted the attention off of the FastRIP combo, directly onto another option which I will talk about in a later paragraph. The problems with my setup start with the R1800. For starters it’s an ink hog. Which, actually, is about the only bad thing I can say for it. The images are magnificent. It just isn’t a very economical printer as far ink goes.

Enter FastRIP with the proprietary FastINK, which is supposedly black enough to block out the UV light. I don’t have enough bad to say about FastRIP, and FastINK, so I’ll just narrow the list down to a few fundamental complaints. First off, the FastINK causes banding throughout the image. Which shows up on the burned screen. This problem would reoccur no matter how much tech support I received, which they were very helpful. I have nothing bad to say about the company. They always returned the calls, and stayed on the line until the problem was solved.

Sometimes FastRIP worked, and when it did the results were great. But it was never consistently dependable. Worse, if the printer sat untouched for a week or so, the FastINK would gum up the print head requiring two or three headcleanings to clear. Not good.

I eventually upgraded the FastRIP to AccuRIP, which is hands down, the simplest, best RIP software that I have used. Probably the most impressive thing about AccuRIP is that it has the ability to print FM dots, i.e. stachastic dots as well as halftones.

Stochastic dots print much, much clearer than halftones, and make for a much finer image without the worry of moire’ patterns. They take a little (or a lot) of getting used to if you’ve been printing halftones, but once you get the hang of it, the results are outstanding.

There’s only one other piece of T-shirt software which does FM dots, and it’s a photoshop plugin from Squaredot.com. My problem with them is that you can’t even download a trial version to check it out. They’re so tight about keeping the software unpirated that they won’t even let you see the user interface. Myself, if I’m paying $800.00 for something, ($2,400 after we apply my business skills to it), I want to see it in action.

So, for me, AccuRIP serves amiably, and makes beautiful image-setter quality film. It has no dongle. Has an extremely small hard drive footprint at 48 megs, and it does the raster process outside of the print driver, so it will work with ANY printer!

That said, AccuRIP, for the new, spot color screen printer, is the best value. The price is $499.00 for the software. Ryonet is offering a RIP combo package of the R1400 with a copy of AccuRIP for about $1050.

There is an alternative. If waiting for your vendor to show you a cheaper, more reasonable idea - you’ll be pissing and moaning about it on your death bed, when you’re old and gray because it ain’t gonna happen.

That’s coming up in Part 2.