Docucolor 240 skew?

[LowcountryPrinter]

Hi,
I am at a small printer in South Carolina, and we are trying to fix/ eliminate our skew on our Docucolor 240 to allow us to run all our jobs on 11x17 or 12x18 (less clicks). Now we have the "The Registration Transport Adjustment Screw kit" but I do not really know how to adjust it and I am afraid I will just make the problem worse. Any pointers on a test image to use or how to do this one?

I also have read about the Tray alignment that you can do through command workstation. We do not have that installed on our computers though we do have the fiery print driver, is there anyway to do the alignment using that?

Also any general advice on removing skew or ways to minimize it would be really great. We want to be able to print post cards, rack cards, and notes cards double sided and the skew is really causing problems as far as front to back registration and hurting the quality of our final products.

Thanks ahead of time and any suggestions or ideas would be great. Also it seem like the skew moves(gets worse) when you are printing, is that possible? How do I minimize it? When I print one sheet it is not that bad but as soon as I do a stack of paper it gets much worse.

Also most of this paper is being run in our tray 5 and is either 80lb text, 80lb cover, or 100lb cover.

Thanks ahead of time
Paul

[Veedle]

Hi Paul,
You need to download Command Workstation 4.6.0.34 (for PC otherwise get the MAc version) from
DocuColor 240/250 Drivers and Downloads

Set it all up, you don't have to worry about your "Registration Transport Adjustment Screw kit" unless your rego is way off - test this by running something off the glass. Adjust if needed.
Run the 'Tray alignment' utility for all trays, dont forget the duplex adjustment.
Use the Alignment test page to fine tune if necessary. Make sure you enable tray alignment in your print driver settings.
Now you have Command Workstation, you can use the colourwise pro tools ( manage colour); run the calibration, setup your colour profile, and now you should be able to get the best out of your printer.
Good luck.

[LowcountryPrinter]

Veedle,
Thanks for the reply. I am going to install Command work station today.
Thanks
Paul

[LowcountryPrinter]

Well the Command workstations works great. Now here is a question if I align a tray with lets say copy paper then I run cover stock in it, do you think the tray needs to be aligned again for the new material?

Also I think I did the color management correctly but I am not sure, and still seems like a lot of my blues come out a little purple. any suggestions on that?

Thanks
Paul

[Veedle]

Hi Paul,
I would expect a small deviation between stocks, if it is critical, run the alignment on the stock you are using.
For the colour - the default settings in the colour profile are OK, but sometimes I run it on Euroscale or SWOP Coated for the CMYK simulation. All the options in there make small differences to certain jobs depending on how they are setup i.e. RGB or CMYK - I tend to put the RGB through the CMYK process so that there is some consistency.
It all gets very messy - just try a few things to achieve the best result, but knowing that those options are there is a good start.

Cheers