AVA now interfaces directly with the Roland UV LEF200 haptic printer, allowing you to output realistic, colour managed proofs. With this new technology, you can achieve rapid 3D prototyping in the comfort of the studio.
Using the 3D Designer Window you can create accurate onscreen representations of your files, fault find in real time, and print them to this 3D printer. This integrated workflow significantly improves efficiency and saves time and money because cylinders can be created accurately ahead of production.
File Preparation
Your file should already include a height map, which is either a custom made greyscale layer, or a layer imported by a Cruse® or Metis scanner.
Custom height maps can be made using tools such as Continuous Tone, Gamma Window, Filters and the Patterns Library.
Turn on Spot Printing as demonstrated in the snapshot below:
Setting up the AVA Digital Print Rip
Do not print directly into the rip hot folder. The SRV3 file needs pre-processing in the Layer Splitter before you can print it on the Roland.
Therefore add a new print queue in the rip and call it ‘To split’ and print the file to this folder.
Once the SRV3 has been printed to the ‘To split’ folder, launch LayerSplitter.
- In the AVA Digital Print Rip, go to File Menu > New Printer, and select the Roland LEF-200.
- Enter the printer’s IP address, and press the Connect button. You will not be able to set up the printer settings unless you are connected to the printer.
Note: The print modes available depend on which inks you have in the Roland (which is why you have to be connected to the printer before you can do the setup).
- You must set the printer settings before printing. Therefore, go to Printer Settings and ensure you select The Print Mode.
- Go to Queue Menu > Colour Separation and activate your ink setting.
Layer Splitter
Printing embossed designs on the Roland LEF-200 requires a multi-pass approach. The colour image and emboss layers are printed separately, with the printer returning to its start position in between layers. In order to support this, we use a pre-processing step on the SRV3 file to prepare it for the multi-pass output. If you open a processed SRV3 file in AVA, you’ll see that the design has got much taller as there are multiple copies of the emboss layer, the LEF-200 driver in the rip expects this, and prints the design at the correct size, cutting the tall page into pieces for each layer printed.
You define the separate printing passes for the Roland in the Layer Splitter.
Press ‘+’ to add a mode, and ‘-‘ to remove a mode.
When adding a mode, choose the type of print you want to use for that layer. A good sequence is Emboss (either matte or gloss), then White, then the Image .
Click the “Convert…” button and choose your source SRV3 file. The output should go in to a print queue for the AVA RIP.
The numbers and checkboxes on the white and emboss layers configure the printing:
- Invert - Cruse® scanners generate a ‘height’ layer which has higher values in the thinner regions of the print. For convenience you can invert these in Layer Splitter. Checking ‘Invert’ makes the software treat lower values as thicker in the output.
- Autoscale - the height map can vary in value from 0 to 100%, but typical output from the scanner won’t use the full range. Checking ‘autoscale’ maps the minimum value in the height map to the minimum thickness and the maximum value to the maximum thickness (values are swapped if invert is used).
- min - the minimum coverage for the print (in 0..1 units, 0 is no printing, 1 is printing at 100%, values greater than 1 will result in the layer being printed in more than one pass to build up to the required thickness).
- max - the maximum coverage. Note that the thicker you make the final print, the longer it will take for it to finish. Also, the varnish is yellowish, so thicker prints will look like they have a yellow layer on top of them.
- max per pass - if you lay down too much ink in one pass, the varnish will not cure fully.
With the Ink setting “RL_LEF200_CMYK_V3_Inkset”
Using the Layer Splitter settings below which produces 13 passes.
100% tone on the Height map layer will = approximately 0.55 mm, 550 microns over 1 Pass of 1 White,
13 Passes of Emboss (Matte) using max per pass 0.75 coating of gloss is set by you changing the max 13 x 0.75 = 9.75
A micron is 0.001 mm, or one thousandth of a mm.
The Layer Splitter application remembers the layer configuration, source and destination folders across launches, so once it is configured you should be able to process new prints easily.
Note: The order in the Layer Splitter changes the order of which the Roland prints first, second and third. This is the same as the layer order in AVA the top will be printed first.
We have noticed the thicker the gloss layer, the more the colour changes in the design. Also if you use more than one coating of gloss you will need to use a spherical spectrophotometer if you need to measure colour from the print.
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