Tayda UV printing, white in COLOR layer

O

optilude

New member
Hi,

I am curious (but not curious enough to pay for a “test enclosure“) what would happen if I used the Tayda UV printing service in the following way:

- A design with some some elements in white
- No overlapping shapes
- Actually white shapes in the COLOR layer
- Shapes in WHITE layer using the RDG_WHITE spot colour directly underneath those white bits

The way I’ve been advised to do it (and which works) is to delete the “look white on my screen” parts of the COLOR layer so that the RDG_WHITE bits show through. The downside of this is that when I look at my designs on screen, they look “wrong”.

My guess is that the UV printer works like other printers and just doesn’t print anything when it encounters fully white CMYK (100,100,100,0), and that it prints the WHITE layer first and then the COLOR layer. In which case, having white elements on the COLOR layer should be functionally equivalent to not having those elements there at all.

Has anyone tried this?

Martin
 
I have not tried but I feel like they may kick it back to you with an error.
What doesn't look right when you do it the advised way? The rgd_white looks greyish in program but not irl. Is that all that's throwing you off? You could do a temporary white layer nested above rgd_white an remove before final export.
There's a double white option as well, Incase you weren't aware. (Must add extra fee to cart) Beneficial if you have true white on dark enclosures.
 
I tend to agree with @jwin615 on this one. If you want an original with the white showing in white you can always keep a separate copy of your artwork. Rdg_white is what the printer will be able to understand. It might work, but it may also be rejected because they can't always verify every design to see if the white in the color layer is covered in the white layer.
 
optilude said:
The way I’ve been advised to do it (and which works) is to delete the “look white on my screen” parts of the COLOR layer so that the RDG_WHITE bits show through. The downside of this is that when I look at my designs on screen, they look “wrong”.
Click to expand...

If the preview color is the main issue you're trying to solve here, I would suggest separating out the process of designing the art vs preparing the art for print in your workflow, even with the latter being sometimes a relatively quick task here. I'll always setup one working file for a design and then save a new version to prepare for print where I make sure text is outlined, objects aren't overlapping, the spot colors are applied and layers setup correctly, regular process colors used have accurate cmyk values, etc.

They're two very different processes and even though catching a design change in the preparation step can be annoying it's much easier than not having an editable file because you've prepared the design file for printing. I find the layer organization in Illustrator to be annoyingly bad personally for this application but at times I have had these steps combined while retaining the original design in a hidden layer underneath the print layers that gets deleted for the exported print file.
 
Agree with all this. The problem with separate files is that it makes it less easy to evolve designs over several iterations of the same pedal. It’s not a huge problem I was curious what would happen if I left the white in.
 
Their page basically explains it here:

Enclosure UV Printing Service - Enclosures - Hardware

www.taydaelectronics.com www.taydaelectronics.com

"Everything in WHITE layer must be painted with RDG_WHITE paint using ROLAND SWATCH, NOT normal white paint, it must be RDG_WHITE, when you use this paint whatever you paint will look greyish color instead of white, no worries, printer will still print it white, greyish color is just computer code to tell printer open white ink on those areas."
Click to expand...
 
KR Sound said:
Their page basically explains it here:

Enclosure UV Printing Service - Enclosures - Hardware

www.taydaelectronics.com www.taydaelectronics.com
Click to expand...

Not quite.

What that page says, at least as I read it, is that on screen the RDG_WHITE will look grayish. Which is definitely true and the “problem” (albeit a minor one) I am trying to solve here.

What I can’t find a definitive answer to, is what the printer will do if there is true white (CMYK 100,100,100,0) in some part of the COLOR layer. My suspicion is that either Tayda will reject the file, or the printer will print nothing there and that possibly in this case if I have RDG_WHITE on the WHITE layer underneath, it’ll all come out looking white.

I could confirm this by ordering a test enclosure but …. I won’t :)
 
KR Sound said:
Just saying, if you use normal white on the color layer, it’ll be grey.
Click to expand...
I sound like I’m being super-pedantic here and I really don’t mean to, but I’m curious if this is something you’ve experienced in an actual design, or if you’re inferring that from the Tayda page you linked?

Sorry, this discussion is mostly academic and vaguely pointless since it’s so easy to do the “safe” thing and just not have white, so feel free to ignore me, I’m just morbidly curious :)
 
I've printed white (#FFFFFF) in the Color layer over RDG_WHITE in the White layer instead of paying for the double white print, once as an experiment. The result is actually a pretty decent white, but it's slightly gray, looking somewhere around #EDEDED for reference, but perfectly usable depending on your design.

If you are looking for a really crisp snow white, I'd just suck it up and shell out the extra $2 for the second white layer.
 
optilude said:
I sound like I’m being super-pedantic here and I really don’t mean to, but I’m curious if this is something you’ve experienced in an actual design, or if you’re inferring that from the Tayda page you linked?

Sorry, this discussion is mostly academic and vaguely pointless since it’s so easy to do the “safe” thing and just not have white, so feel free to ignore me, I’m just morbidly curious :)
Click to expand...
I get what you mean, if you personally print in white on your everyday computer/printer combo, nothing will get printed even if your printer also prints in CMYK which are basic ink/toner colors. But the UV printer does not compute the normal white the same way, so it tries to go to the closest which is light grey.
 
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