CompuServe Thread

Hmmm. Strictly text files will fly through our Compugraphic 9600PS (with MaxRIP) at nearly a page per minute. L300 with RIP 3 will be roughly the same. But pure text files don't do justice to PostScript, and graphic mixes are horribly unpredictable as to RIP time. A job with PICT images will be excruciatingly slow, and certain PostScript operators – particularly rotates and graduated fills – will grind incessantly. We have one client (Dale Glasgow – featured in this month's Step-by-Step, incidentally) who uses these features quite a bit, and "standard operating procedure" for his more complicated separations is to start them up at "go home" time and hope that they're finished before you get in the next morning. (For those lurkers who are interested – the Step-by-Step article about Dale centered around a file infamous with our staff known as "pitching spread" – the full separation took 7 (seven!) hours to run on the 9600!). But all that doesn't answer your question – for the high-end imagesetters (L300, CG9600), I'd plan in the vicinity of 30 pages per hour for an unsophisticated job mix. Figure half that if you expect to have a number of designer/illustrators in your user base, and don't forget to add in "down" time for each supply or take-up cassette change. …mm