Physics Talk

Kai Schaeffer · Guest

Hello,

we have an inkjet printer which is able to print on aluminum (under
anodised coating). It's working quite well so far we only have some big
problems with the color profile. Right now we have no good profile. Over
Gretag Macbeth we found a dealer who tried to create a CMYK profile for
us. The dealer told us, that they had some trouble to create the
profile. The main problem is, that the reflection of the aluminum is
very high. Usually the instruments measure the backscattered light and
so they get low signals especially for the bright colors. Nevertheless
they created a profile but there are some shifts in the colors (brown is
shifting to red for instance). It seems that a color measurement
instruments with an integrating sphere would work better. Actually we
need an instrument to measure to create color profiles (an automated
scanner would be great of course). Has someone an idea how we could
solve our problem? What device could we buy?

Thank you,
Kai

Scott Dee · Guest

Hello Kai

I see nobody has replied to this so I'll have a go...

I'm not sure there is an easy answer to this. We sell UV Inkjet
printers that print direct to rigid substrate and our clients often
print to raw aluminium sheet or powder-coated aluminium sheet. The best
we've been able to do for these signage clients is to create a profile
for a semi-gloss white coated metal sheet and use that profile.

I don't know that editing the white point of such a workflow would give
pleasing results for such a gray white point.

If anyone has found an acceptable method for handling these situations,
I'd also like to hear about it.

Scott

Kai Schaeffer wrote: