Automated Color Calibration for iGen3® Digital Production Press

Automated Color Calibration (ACC) is a feature for the Xerox iGen3 that automates the process of color calibration on digital printers. The standard product iGen3 is supplied with a DTP41 spectrophotometer, which is used to calibrate the iGen3. It is recommended that this calibration be done once per shift per halftone dot. The process involves printing 13 rows of color patches on 2 pages and manually feeding them into the X-Rite DTP41 spectrophotometer. This manual process can take up to 20 minutes for 2 halftones.

ACC provides a high-speed spectrophotometer internal to the printer that allows customers to print color charts automatically every so many hours or so many printed pages. The charts are read by the internal spectrophotometer and the outputs of this reading process are converted to yield new Tone Reproduction Curves (TRCs).

This automated process takes 2-3 minutes per halftone (line screen). ACC is significantly faster than the manual approach, it's simpler to use and it eliminates the potential for human error in the process of feeding calibration charts into the DTP41.

ACC benefits include:

1. Eliminates mistakes due to human error or mis-feeds when calibrating manually
2. Performs calibration in the engine, which is activated via the GUI, so no separate feeding of color charts is required
3. Reduces non-productive printer availability time and print window conflicts
4. Automated process helps prevent operators forgetting to calibrate or calibrating off schedule due to workload