Printing the cut pattern on the gel (customer specified)?
I believe the idea is the gel would either come in a clear sheet with colored squares to cut out or precut and done.
 
How well does this process work for scroller rolls? Would make for fewer seams, since many of them could be printed together, instead of taped.
Talked to @Joel N about it today at LDI. You could send them a list of the 18 colors you want and the order and they could print it as a single sheet of plastic. Cool. Huh?
 
Talked to @Joel N about it today at LDI. You could send them a list of the 18 colors you want and the order and they could print it as a single sheet of plastic. Cool. Huh?
@Michael K @Amiers @Joel N Thus you could have extra frames of the same color within the same scroller string for built in spares of colors you use a lot and which fade sooner. For that matter, you could print two or three, or more, of the same color in a row and only scroll them along until the burnt portion is out of the field. That ought to maximize your use.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
 
I went by the booth today and I was impressed. The ability to have gel show up labeled with what fixture it goes in and to have 8 foot continuous gel strings that I don't have to assemble myself are big advantages in my eyes. Some of the custom color and colored breakups also sound interesting for me.

Two questions that I still have:
  • Does it come cut? Smaller boxes are cheaper to ship, but labor to cut adds expense. Not sure it's good for a theater with interns or volunteers, but when I was touring if I could get my follow spot gel sent to me pre-cut into rounds to go in the boomerang I probably could have justified a reasonably higher price.
  • Is the diffusion in the initial pass consistent or controllable? A trick I used often was to focus to a hard edge and then drop in diffusion instead of running the barrel to soften things up. Having a diffused finishing option for the printed gel could accomplish color and softness all in one sheet.
 
I went by the booth today and I was impressed. The ability to have gel show up labeled with what fixture it goes in and to have 8 foot continuous gel strings that I don't have to assemble myself are big advantages in my eyes. Some of the custom color and colored breakups also sound interesting for me.

Two questions that I still have:
  • Does it come cut? Smaller boxes are cheaper to ship, but labor to cut adds expense. Not sure it's good for a theater with interns or volunteers, but when I was touring if I could get my follow spot gel sent to me pre-cut into rounds to go in the boomerang I probably could have justified a reasonably higher price.
  • Is the diffusion in the initial pass consistent or controllable? A trick I used often was to focus to a hard edge and then drop in diffusion instead of running the barrel to soften things up. Having a diffused finishing option for the printed gel could accomplish color and softness all in one sheet.
@porkchop @Joel N Brett; Think of receiving your 8 sided colors pre-cut for your Ianaro 6" 1Kw Polaris and 2Kw Bambino fresnels instead of having to take square cuts and knock the corners off to fit in the 8 sided frames.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
@porkchop I believe at the minimum they could print the gel rounded to the perfect size, making it super easy to cut the printed circle out from the clear surrounding area, but I'll follow up on the precut questions with Joel tomorrow at the show.
 
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@Joel N I forgot to follow up with you on this question Joel. Are you thinking about pre-cutting the gels, perforations, or just a full sheet with the clear gaps between printed areas like the demo sheet you had? Or is this another one of those questions for down the road?

If the price is right, the convenience of getting a stack of pre-cut, pre-labeled gel, the exact amount you need is a pretty awesome idea.
 
@porkchop @Joel N Brett; Think of receiving your 8 sided colors pre-cut for your Ianaro 6" 1Kw Polaris and 2Kw Bambino fresnels instead of having to take square cuts and knock the corners off to fit in the 8 sided frames.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

Luckily I've never had to play that game, but it sounds like a pain.

@porkchop I believe at the minimum they could print the gel rounded to the perfect size, making it super easy to cut the printed circle out from the clear surrounding area, but I'll follow up on the precut questions with Joel tomorrow at the show.

Colored round on clear would have made me happy enough. Still know exactly how many cuts I'm getting no matter who I trust with the scissors.
 
Colored round on clear would have made me happy enough. Still know exactly how many cuts I'm getting no matter who I trust with the scissors.

Agreed! Being able to just cut out the colored circle would be great!
 
As far as followspot colors, since there is some leeway on sheet size, for A-list tours with proper advancing of the show you could carry venue specific sheets listing venue, spot number and frame number.
 
  • Is the diffusion in the initial pass consistent or controllable? A trick I used often was to focus to a hard edge and then drop in diffusion instead of running the barrel to soften things up. Having a diffused finishing option for the printed gel could accomplish color and softness all in one sheet.

This is interesting, too.
If you do switch over to printed gel, what happens to the diffusions you have now? Does it open it up that we can now have any color with any diffusion all in one sheet? Or would we need to stack them like we do now?
I do have to say, I love R124-127 for my dance recital cyc lights.

Then again looking out a few years, I have to imagine that colored washes are going to continue the switch to LED faster than specials and other hard-focus fixtures, based solely on fixture cost. Hmm.
 
@Joel N I forgot to follow up with you on this question Joel. Are you thinking about pre-cutting the gels, perforations, or just a full sheet with the clear gaps between printed areas like the demo sheet you had? Or is this another one of those questions for down the road?

If the price is right, the convenience of getting a stack of pre-cut, pre-labeled gel, the exact amount you need is a pretty awesome idea.
GaffTaper,
I would guess any secondary operations like perf or full cuts would be extra cost. The labeling is easy since it does not necessarily take another operation.
Joel
 
Your current 24" x 24" printer is *20k*? You're getting taken for a ride, based on my current knowledge of the largeformat inkjet market, by a factor of at least 2, possibly as high as 3.
 
@Joel N
If the price is right, the convenience of getting a stack of pre-cut, pre-labeled gel, the exact amount you need is a pretty awesome idea.

GaffTaper,
I would guess any secondary operations like perf or full cuts would be extra cost. The labeling is easy since it does not necessarily take another operation.
Joel
I would think that a secondary machine, basically a vinyl cutting sign machine, with a bit of programming could use the same datafile as the printing machine to easily cut the sheets to order.
 
GaffTaper,
I would guess any secondary operations like perf or full cuts would be extra cost. The labeling is easy since it does not necessarily take another operation.
Joel
@Joel N Have you anything further to post on your progress / plans / thoughts? Basically any updates?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
 
@Joel N Have you anything further to post on your progress / plans / thoughts? Basically any updates?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.

Ron,
LDI and the feedback was great. We are buried with some outside projects right now so I expect we will start to play with it more some time in the first quarter. The goal to see if we can take it closer to a finished product ready for field testing.
Joel
 
Your current 24" x 24" printer is *20k*? You're getting taken for a ride, based on my current knowledge of the largeformat inkjet market, by a factor of at least 2, possibly as high as 3.
We don't have a 24" x 24" printer. If we did, that is definitely about what it would cost. We are not dealing with "off the shelf" large format printers. They are not good enough for what we use them for. They can't do the resolution we need.
 
I'll second @GreyWyvern on this, as the gel printer here at Apollo is not a large format inkjet printer-
 

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