Contone Ink Cost Calculation Feature

Contone Ink Cost Calculation Feature

Problem/Question

When using Contone printers, no dot sizes are available for calculating ink costs.

Dithering, i.e. the dot distribution in the printout (simplified explanation), for Contone drivers cannot be carried out by the Ergosoft RIP, so that no corresponding data is available for calculating the ink quantity.

 

"How can the ink costs still be calculated for these drivers?"

 

Note: To be able to calculate the virtual drop size, you need to know the actual consumption. This information may be available via the printer control panel, front-end software, ink tank monitoring, ...

ErgoLytics and JobTicket reports are available for estimated ink consumption


Solution/Work-Around

To obtain the estimated ink consumption, proceed as follows:

  1. Open the Contone Print Environment
  2. Select "Cost Factors
  3. Set the "Dot Volume" to User
  4. Enter a value for the "Ink Volume" of e.g. 10 pl
  5. Close the Print Environment

Then print out a file and open the JobTicket with the right mouse button.

There you can see the estimated costs for the individual colors.

Compare these values with those from the printer control panel or the front-end software, for example.

The values of the individual colors must be added together.

 

Use the following formula to calculate the Virtual Drop Size:

Actual amount (printer control panel or front end) * estimated drop size (manually entered ink volume) / calculated amount (JobTicket) = Virtual Drop Size


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