Tayda UV Printing

[Brett]

I'm brand new to illustrator and trying to prep some art for a print. It's I think a pretty simple layout but I'm not sure how to do some of the final steps. I have a bunch of pen strokes that I applied brushes to that are overlapping and I'm not sure if I need to "flatten" them down to make sure that they print with the right transparency/opacity? I also have to knock out a section of dark "ink" to let the white text show through so I just made a copy of the white text (using white as the fill instead of the Roland swatch) and put it in the color layer. I converted all the text to paths so there would be no issue with fonts but other than that I left all the objects and paths as I created them in Illustrator.

I wouldn't mind just sending it and trying out the print, but 10 days is a long time to trouble shoot some art. I exported a PDF of the artwork and then converted that into a JPEG to post here and it looks like I expected it too but I'm a bit nervous about the print process not working like a regular laser printer...

One more thing...

You may want to consider adding some character spacing on your control labels. Tayda's UV printing is good, but some of those characters may run together when printed, especially the "Fi" in "Filter" and "Filth". If you haven't already, make sure you subtract the brush stroke vectors behind your text as well.

 

[finebyfine]

@sixstringsandwich two things:
- I would expand the appearance of all the brushed lines so that they're solid objects and not paths. Doing so is likely going to ruin the transparency you're going for so I'd do this in batches per opacity level, and group each opacity level together.
- I wouldn't print with anything but 100% opacity objects. I don't know if they will technically print but even if they do it'll be difficult to make sure you know how they'll print. If you want to maintain the overlaps, after you have expanded all of the paths to fills, you can use the divide pathfinder on two that overlap, and set the fill of the overlapped section as a mix of them to create faux transparency effects.

 

[sixstringsandwich]

Cool, great advice from both of you. Half the battle is just learning the verbage. Like, converting the paths to objects is expanding? I'm sure I'll get it, but man Illustrator is a bear to work with for a novice.

 

[uranium_jones]

Not to jinx you or anything, but when I submitted my files for the "Siren" build (p. 25) all the colored bands actually overlapped each other. I spent a few hours manually correcting it in Affinity Designer only to have the result print just fine with the "bad" file I had already submitted.

In Adobe Illustrator, the feature you want to look for is the "Pathfinder Merge" action. I saw this mentioned quite a bit while looking up the Affinity Designer equivalent (there is none.)

 

[benny_profane]

Not to jinx you or anything, but when I submitted my files for the "Siren" build (p. 25) all the colored bands actually overlapped each other. I spent a few hours manually correcting it in Affinity Designer only to have the result print just fine with the "bad" file I had already submitted.

In Adobe Illustrator, the feature you want to look for is the "Pathfinder Merge" action. I saw this mentioned quite a bit while looking up the Affinity Designer equivalent (there is none.)

In Affinity Designer, you have to use the boolean operators. It's a bit more labor-intensive than the Adobe Illustrator method. Reference the discussion after this post.

 

[AubreySound]

Hi everyone!!
So after previous successful prints at Tayda, I've been told my latest batch won't print and don't have 'the proper RDG swatches' even including the exact same files I've previously printed.. Would any of you be kind enough to take a peek at my files in Affinity and see what's up?!?

Thanks in advance!!

 

[slacjs]

Has anyone had any luck sending a file with a png placed in it that hasn't been turned into a vector? I'm having some trouble getting it to look good. Cheers.

 

[Chris420]

This one came out nicely. White is white and it was made in Affinity so it is possible to get good results. I will try something more complex next time.

Awesome I would love to have that font do you happen to know the name of it?

 

[Chris420]

Awesome I would love to have that font do you happen to know the name of it?

I found the font thanks to your pedal https://fonts2u.com/candice.font

 

[Chris420]

I can finally say that the Affinity designer way of works with all three layers. I am very happy with this. This has a white layer and white in the color layer with gloss varnish on top.

View attachment 12460

Here is my POC for scanning in hand painted enclosures and making Tayda prints:

Original:

View attachment 12461

Print:
View attachment 12462

The card on the bottom is shadow from the phone.

Excited!!

I Love the J5 pedal thats really awesome. Im building an actual small robot J5 but its been on the back burner in a bin of parts for a long while lol

 

[AubreySound]

Been fighting with getting the graphics to print the way I'd like..
Left: First attempt. My whites weren't properly white and letters came out unsharp. I initially didn't like the white under the buffalo (now I do!) Didn't like my logo being so dark either.
Center: Second go. chose to not put any white under the buffalo.. it looks OK but only from certain angles. Whites came out perfect and sharp.
Right: Third go: Thought I'd try for a brigher red and put white below the buffalo..looks like a fucking blob, and the white didn't 'bleed' like it did on the first go.
Looks like I'm going to have to take the buffalo from design 1 and make a 4th go before I can actually do a run of these!!

 

[finebyfine]

Been fighting with getting the graphics to print the way I'd like..
Left: First attempt. My whites weren't properly white and letters came out unsharp. I initially didn't like the white under the buffalo (now I do!) Didn't like my logo being so dark either.
Center: Second go. chose to not put any white under the buffalo.. it looks OK but only from certain angles. Whites came out perfect and sharp.
Right: Third go: Thought I'd try for a brigher red and put white below the buffalo..looks like a fucking blob, and the white didn't 'bleed' like it did on the first go.
Looks like I'm going to have to take the buffalo from design 1 and make a 4th go before I can actually do a run of these!!

The army green enclosure is by far the trickiest color to work with Tayda does, imho - although some of these issues will apply to any with single color detailed line art (I love the look of the 2nd personally by the way). The army green is such a mid tone brightness that it can wash out whites and blacks at the same time. I just print straight white with two passes when I do an army green one now.

If you're using illustrator you could try approximating the enclosure color (Tayda links to a Pantone color that is technically from Pantone's textile line unfortunately so it won't be 1:1) and using overprint previews. If you do this you'll need to hide any of the spot colors beneath objects you're working with (ie, hide your white spot layer)

 

[AubreySound]

The army green enclosure is by far the trickiest color to work with Tayda does, imho - although some of these issues will apply to any with single color detailed line art (I love the look of the 2nd personally by the way). The army green is such a mid tone brightness that it can wash out whites and blacks at the same time. I just print straight white with two passes when I do an army green one now.

If you're using illustrator you could try approximating the enclosure color (Tayda links to a Pantone color that is within their textile line unfortunately so it won't be 1:1) and using overprint previews. If you do this you'll need to hide any of the spot colors beneath objects you're working with (ie, hide your white spot layer)

I should note that I'm using affinity. I did drop in the pantone color for the swatch on the last two attempts (first attempt I think I screenshotted one of yours you posted and tried to get it as close as I could haha!)
I have a feeling that white bleed on the first one was some issue with their machine and I won't be able to replicate it.. As much as I'd love to get that maroon buffalo w the white bleed, I think I'll have to just go with an all white design.

 

[benny_profane]

I have a feeling that white bleed on the first one was some issue with their machine and I won't be able to replicate it.

You should be able to get that again if you add a line stroke that extends beyond the maroon. You'll have to convert it back to a curve before exporting for printing, though.

 

[jeffwhitfield]

The problem with Affinity is that it spits out a PDF that doesn't preserve the layers. It isn't really a true Adobe PDF...which is problematic in that when Tayda opens up the PDF, they can't see the various layers (ie. GLOSS, COLOR, WHITE). I learned this by downloading a trial of Adobe Illustrator and opening up some of the PDFs I exported from Affinity. Ended up just doing all mine straight in Adobe Illustrator. Would LOVE to get things to work in Affinity. Might need to get Affinity themselves involved to debug the problem.

Beyond that, if you plan on printing on dark enclosures, you'll need to provide a white layer behind your color layer. Otherwise, your color will bleed into the darker enclosure and won't look right. So, white first, then color, then gloss. Setup your layers and make sure to avoid overlapping colors if at all possible. That was the recipe to success for me.

 

[Chris420]

Been fighting with getting the graphics to print the way I'd like..
Left: First attempt. My whites weren't properly white and letters came out unsharp. I initially didn't like the white under the buffalo (now I do!) Didn't like my logo being so dark either.
Center: Second go. chose to not put any white under the buffalo.. it looks OK but only from certain angles. Whites came out perfect and sharp.
Right: Third go: Thought I'd try for a brigher red and put white below the buffalo..looks like a fucking blob, and the white didn't 'bleed' like it did on the first go.
Looks like I'm going to have to take the buffalo from design 1 and make a 4th go before I can actually do a run of these!!

If you want you can post link to the image you want, and i can put it in Ai and get you a pdf that will look the way your real image looks, providing you able to show me how it should look. I already have the proper colours and layers setup to make it look the same as the image would.

 

[AubreySound]

The problem with Affinity is that it spits out a PDF that doesn't preserve the layers. It isn't really a true Adobe PDF...which is problematic in that when Tayda opens up the PDF, they can't see the various layers (ie. GLOSS, COLOR, WHITE). I learned this by downloading a trial of Adobe Illustrator and opening up some of the PDFs I exported from Affinity. Ended up just doing all mine straight in Adobe Illustrator. Would LOVE to get things to work in Affinity. Might need to get Affinity themselves involved to debug the problem.

Beyond that, if you plan on printing on dark enclosures, you'll need to provide a white layer behind your color layer. Otherwise, your color will bleed into the darker enclosure and won't look right. So, white first, then color, then gloss. Setup your layers and make sure to avoid overlapping colors if at all possible. That was the recipe to success for me.

Yup.. as I said, I put white under the right buffalo, and it didn't get that 'bleed' like the left one. 3 of my other pedals are on black, 1 is on white, so those were easy to do, even w colors!
I might have to get a trial of Illustrator and take a peek, just not stoked on $30/month for it!

 

[AubreySound]

If you want you can post link to the image you want, and i can put it in Ai and get you a pdf that will look the way your real image looks, providing you able to show me how it should look. I already have the proper colours and layers setup to make it look the same as the image would.

Thanks. I have 4 other pedals I've successfully printed w Tayda. I fudged the properly adding the RDG swatch on the left one. The other two are correctly done. I'm basically looking to have the buffalo on the left one, with the whites and sharpness of the letters on the other two.. I'm unsure if the 'bleed' was from an issue with my design, or just with Tayda's machine.
Attached are quick phone photos up close of the L and R ones.. notice the one doesn't have the bleed.. but both were done with the buffalo graphic added to the white layer.

 

[Chris420]

Thanks. I have 4 other pedals I've successfully printed w Tayda. I fudged the properly adding the RDG swatch on the left one. The other two are correctly done. I'm basically looking to have the buffalo on the left one, with the whites and sharpness of the letters on the other two.. I'm unsure if the 'bleed' was from an issue with my design, or just with Tayda's machine.
Attached are quick phone photos up close of the L and R ones.. notice the one doesn't have the bleed.. but both were done with the buffalo graphic added to the white layer.

 

[Preverb]

Thanks. I have 4 other pedals I've successfully printed w Tayda. I fudged the properly adding the RDG swatch on the left one. The other two are correctly done. I'm basically looking to have the buffalo on the left one, with the whites and sharpness of the letters on the other two.. I'm unsure if the 'bleed' was from an issue with my design, or just with Tayda's machine.
Attached are quick phone photos up close of the L and R ones.. notice the one doesn't have the bleed.. but both were done with the buffalo graphic added to the white layer.

At least both images are recognizable as a bison?

I'm at this step now. I vectorized an image at autotracer.org and it seems to have 100+ elements. How do I apply the proper swatch to it?