HELP! PrePress Solutions PantherPlus Imagesetter

[PaperThinAir]

This dino is giving me some serious headaches!

This imagesetter's main function to produce films for burning screens used on our automatic silk screen press.

For some reason nearly every time I print to this machine it crashes in the last stages of imaging the film. The RIP for this machine is running OS9 and PantherRip, files are sent from ID4 and Quark 8 on a G5 running Leopard, could this be a communication error?

It seems as though changing the print settings themselves in Q8 and ID4 make no difference so It doesn't appear as though I'm outputting incorrectly as OCCASIONALLY it runs just fine after a number of reboots of the RIP and the imagesetter.

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated as PrePress Solutions Inc no longer exist and I have yet to find an imagesetter tech who's willing to help.

[discountprinting]

From my years of computer & printing experience I would look at what processes are running on the RIP computer. You may have a conflict caused by a process running in the background. It is hard to say without knowing your computer's configuration. You may want to try a clean install of the operating system & the RIP software, that may solve the issue. The other option (most likely to fix the problem if you have hardware issues) would be to buy a new computer to run the rip software & re-install the RIP on it. Might also trying increasing the RAM on the computer....

Since it is imaging film ok up to the end I think I would safely rule out it being the imaging unit unless a laser is possibly going out...would suspect this if lines or stray marks start showing up....

Hope this helps you out...

[PaperThinAir]

Thank you so much, I'll have to try setting up the rip on another computer.

However, what is concerning is that you mention stray marks being an indication that the laser may have an issue. The Rip receives the files correctly as far as I can tell but when imaging the film and it crashes, the resulting film shows all kinds of errors toward the last inch or so. It goes from the correct image to all these horizontal lines in seemingly random patterns.

[bmarple]

Try dumbing down your postscript to level 2. If that doesn't work, try level 1. Sounds suspiciously like a postscript issue. It's been more than 10 years since I last touched a Panther. Good luck.

[jotterpinky]

Just out of curiosity does anyone have the software RIP for the Panther Imagesetter. We have been having hardware problems on our Mac and have been trying to migrate everything over to a new system. Unfortunately we do not have a copy of the RIP software for the Panther and have been forced to move it to the corner and outsource our plates until someone has time to track down the software from the vendor. We've looked a bit online but haven't been able to find the manufacturer...seems as though the phone numbers we've found online lead nowhere.

If someone knows where I can obtain this please let me know

[PaperThinAir]

PrePress Solutions was once less than 15 minutes away from my office, but as far as I can tell they no longer exist. I may have the software on disc somewhere but I don't know how the file sharing laws concerning this situation work.

[johnmpcny]

I have panter rip 8 with Dongle. It is ps 3 with the Mac Os9 and has escor. If you want I will sell it for $300

John@mpcny.com

[elsievo]

We had a bad spot on our hard drive of the Panther RIP. When the computer tried to write to it the Panther would hang up and no longer write.
We put the software on another Mac and its been running fine. A bit slower because it was an older Mac but working none the less.

We're running Quark 8.1, ID4 off a G5 Power PC mac using Leopard, to a G3 running OS 8.6. Still works.

[gg2017]

Glad you found your problem. I haven't used a Panther RIP for 10+ years and this info is common knowledge and could be outdated...but don't rotate your images within Quark other programs. Once you find the angle you want, use Photoshop to rotate the image and place it back in. In the old days that would take minutes of my ripping time...sometimes 1/2 hour or so depending on percentage of rotation. Those rips did 90 ,180, or 270 degrees fine but hated angles like 3%.

[Marc.Ram]

This dino is giving me some serious headaches!

This imagesetter's main function to produce films for burning screens used on our automatic silk screen press.

For some reason nearly every time I print to this machine it crashes in the last stages of imaging the film. The RIP for this machine is running OS9 and PantherRip, files are sent from ID4 and Quark 8 on a G5 running Leopard, could this be a communication error?

It seems as though changing the print settings themselves in Q8 and ID4 make no difference so It doesn't appear as though I'm outputting incorrectly as OCCASIONALLY it runs just fine after a number of reboots of the RIP and the imagesetter.

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated as PrePress Solutions Inc no longer exist and I have yet to find an imagesetter tech who's willing to help.

When you say it crashes, do you mean the Imagesetter crashes (shows a bomb icon and a number)? if so try this from the Keypad: tell the machine to advance some film. If the Imagesetter crashes then, (Shows a cherry bomb on the LCD) you may have something blocking the SOL (start of Line) sensor, this could be dust or may require you to do a beam steering adjustment. Worst case you may have a laser problem.

Marc