We just bought a used Douthit machine, have it printing very well, but... it did not come with a RIP and the RIP is currently out of our budget. We currently use a work around where we export each color of illustrator as a Tiff file, and then open in photoshop and convert to Bitmap. The issue I am seeing is 1, it is very time consuming, and two, I think there is an issue with illustrator not exporting the files exactly the same as we are seeing screens off as much as 1/4" on press, completely defeating the purpose of having a CTS in the first place. I could see maybe my loading technique is a little off, but no way does that explain a 1/4" difference when going to press. We previously had the 1rst gen M&R i-screen and would register over 90% of screens without toucing a micro.
So I have been looking at different Rip options out there and just curious if anyone has recommendations for an affordable RIP solution to convert illustrator to bitmap Tiff files without having to convert in photoshop. This is mainly for spot color vector images. Any seperation files we handle exclusively in photoshop and havent seen the alignment issues on press
