Background
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The standard procedure for measuring plate throughput on Trendsetter
output devices at commercial customer sites is to submit several jobs
from Print Console, note the imaging time from start to finish, and
divide the elapsed time by the number of plates imaged. At Trendsetter
NEWS customer sites, however, many more plates are typically queued in
Print Console at a time, and high throughput is much more important.
For this reason, when we send a small batch of jobs via Print Console to
the Trendsetter NEWS output device, we do not include the imaging time
for the first and last plates, as doing so could result in an
artificially low throughput calculation.
In addition, for MCE NEWS devices (serial numbers starting with “NM”, the verbose
level should be set to customer for the media handler
subsystem and turned off for all other subsystems. This is because
higher levels of verbosity (for example, service) can
interfere with firmware operations and impede throughput. |
Procedure
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- Set the verbose mode in firmware to customer, and turn off verbosity
for all subsystems except mdh (media handler). Use the following
commands:
verbose user customer
verbose off all
verbose on mdh
For NEWS 200 devices, also turn
off verbosity for the slave thermal head (MCE2):
verbose off all
- From Print Console, submit 12 jobs (same file).
Note: For NEWS 200 devices, the highest potential for
throughput is achieved when the device images two broadsheet plates
at once, one with the master head and one with the slave head.
Therefore, you should send two identical files per job if possible.
If the customer does not use single broadsheets, then just send
files for the panorama size plate.
- After completion of the 12 jobs, go to the workstation hard drive
and open the most recent device log file in a text editor.
- Record the time stamp for the
unload started
operation of the 1st and 11th cycle, and
calculate the difference in seconds between these operations.
Note: Throughput specifications for NEWS devices are based on
continuous imaging, which is why the time stamps for the first and
twelfth cycles are not used
- Divide the difference in seconds between the ends of the 1st and
11th jobs by 10 to obtain the average time for each job.
- To calculate the plates per hour, divide the number of seconds in an
hour (3600) by the average time in seconds for each job. For dual
broadsheets, multiply this figure by two.
Example 1—NEWS 200
(2 broadsheet plates: 575 mm mainscan x
320 mm subscan)
- Job 1
unload started time stamp: 14:47:01.258
- Job 11
unload started time stamp: 14:52:23.937
- Time elapsed between 1st and 11th jobs:
5:22:679 or 322.679 seconds
- Average cycle time per job: 322.679/10 = 32.268 seconds
- Jobs per hour: 3600/32.268 = 111.6
- Plates per hour: 111.6 x 2 = 223.2
Example 2—NEWS 50
(1 panorama plate: 586 mm mainscan x 817
mm subscan)
- Job 1
unload started time stamp: 15:02:22.357
- Job 11
unload started time stamp: 15:27:21:362
- Time elapsed between 1st and 11th jobs:
24:59:005 or 1499.005 seconds
- Average cycle time per job: 1499.005/10 = 149.9 seconds
- Jobs/plates per hour: 3600/149.9 = 24.02
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