ColorProof Best Practices - Setting New Calibration Tolerances

Printer calibration tolerances are dependent strongly upon the physical environment that the device lives in, and can vary from point to point or printer to printer inside even the same environment. While we don't have a recommendation specifically beyond the default values of 5/1, there is a straightforward way to determine the optimal values for your device locally. 

Printer should be away from windows, especially south-facing, and away from any ventilation outputs, dusty areas, and the recommended humidity is 40-60%. Temperature should be generally within comfortable human temps - 68-75 F-ish. 

First, after verifying the nozzles are clear, run all three automatic print head alignments in order from Unidir, Bidir 2color, and Bidir-All.  These can be launched from the front panel of the printer under Maintenance.

Next, run the paper feed adjustment test form. Instructions are included in the document attached to this article. 

After that is finished, you'll want to go to the Output tab in ColorProof and click on the printer then scroll down in the lower section under maintenance to the Calibration tolerances. Change the dropdown menu to "Custom tolerances" instead of "From Calibration Set", and then define very low target tolerances in the fields below that - maybe max dE 2, avg .3. The purpose here is to then run the calibration with incredibly low target numbers to force it to go through several iterations and really get to the best state it can achieve. 

Once you've found how well the printer is capable of calibrating, you will take those numbers it actually hit and add some wiggle room to the values. So, if it got to .35 dE average, maybe set the target to .5 or .55. If the max was 2.5, set the new target to 3 or 3.25. 

From there, you'll generally want to monitor how close the numbers come in  - the sweet spot would be to calibrate in 1-2 iterations, maybe 3. If it's struggling through 4-5 iterations every cali cycle, you'll want to loosen the tolerances a little or calibrate more often, or see if the environment stability can be improved.