Navigator DFE for Meteor inkjet printhead drive electronics has several configuration options which must be taken care of after the installation and before printing.  

These can be taken care of programmatically, manually, or within the DFE user interface.

Most users will do this with the DFE user interface, which will be discussed first.  The final section will discuss directly configuring the specific ini file that stores the configuration (for the special case user or developer).


Section 1.   Navigator DFE  for Meteor User Interface configuration.  (for users of the DFE)



In the DFE, click the gear on the upper right to get to the configuration area.



Here is the device configuration area of the DFE:




The left column contains status information and information about what configuration is available in your Meteor Configuration file.  

The middle column and the lower right corner contain important configuration options for a Meteor equipped printer.  


Product Detect Signal needs to be either Internal or External.  This governs printing a page.  Product Detect (known to some people as "Top of Form" or "TOF") is how the printheads are instructed to fire at the correct time.  In external mode a cylinder or a sensor will send the signal to the print controller.  In internal mode, the Navigator system will tell the Meteor system about the repeat length of the job and then the Meteor system generates the signal over and over until all of the pages are printed.

In the screen capture above, Internal mode is toggled off so the system is in External Product Detect mode.

 

If you set PD to Internal mode, then Additional Page Gap becomes an available setting.  Additional Page Gap adds pixels to the internal PD interval to increase the gap between pages in internal PD mode.  240 is the default setting and it corresponds to the number of nozzles per 300dpi on your printhead.  You may need a different setting here depending on your printhead.  If print impressions are overlapping a tiny bit then this value can be adjusted higher which will directly increase the PD Interval.  If you want to add a gap between impressions then, again, this value can be adjusted higher which will directly increase the PD Interval.

Easy explanation:  increase this number if you want more gap between pages or decrease it for less gap.



In either Product Detect case you can decide when to start printing with Enable at Buffered Page Count. 

This determines the number of pages that should be buffered before turning on the Product Detect Signal (starting output on the press)  If the press under-runs at a high speed, there are two options: slow down the press speed, or increase this value.  The value is a number of pages in a print job.  


Chained Jobs, minimum page count required 

 In order to qualify for running back to back (chained) jobs, the job must have at least this many pages.  

9 is the value that worked reliably for back to back jobs when we first implemented it.  It probably needs to be adjusted higher for higher resolution jobs and/or when running at faster speeds.  You can try any values you like.  It’s the minimum number of pages required in a job to be eligible for running as a back to back job.  Example case. The user has four jobs and runs them back to back and the number of pages being output for the four jobs are 10, 15, 7, and 20.  The first two jobs will run as back to back jobs, but when we see that the third job only has 7 pages and is less than the specified 9 required for back to back jobs, it will run as a new job with a large gap preceding it and the fourth job will also run as a new job with a gap because the third job will not chain to any others.  This takes into account the Number of Copies for a job, so if it is a one page job but you are running 10 copies, then it qualifies as being over 9.

(update June 30, 2020:  a separator page is a special case and is supported regardless of what number you have set here.  If you send a job consisting of a single page between longer jobs, it should still job-chain)

There is more detail discussed here: https://help.xitron.com/a/solutions/articles/1000291543

 

Configuration File is the active Meteor Configuration File.   You can not change Meteor Configuration files while the system is processing jobs.   Once jobs are finished processing, you can change this to any config file you have at c:\Navigator\Navigator\Config\Meteor Configs.  See below.


Demonstration Mode is a special mode that uses custom Meteor test rigs.   It stops the DFE from checking for printheads before coming online.  A production system should have this mode turned off.  Then we will query the Meteor PCC card for printhead availability before allowing the DFE to come online.


The picture above shows a system configured for External Product Detect and for Production Mode.



Hidden away under the Advanced area is a basic configuration of the PCC and printheads.  Click the lock.  Password is xitron.  Unless your vendor changed it.

The number of Meteor PCC cards and the number of printheads per PCC are configured here.



Meteor waveform and product detect settings confirmation at job queueing

In order to see this dialog box when you Queue or Print a job:

You must turn this preference on:








Section 2.  Spooler INI configuration.  (for developers or OEM manufacturers)

The spooler which communicates with the Meteor system requires configuration.

This spooler configuration is done inside the xispooler.ini file at %appdata%\Xitron\NX\XiSpooler.ini.

It can be done manually or programmatically.  (For programmatic access please ask your Xitron representative about API access)



A quick way to get there is open a window and type %appdata%.  Hit return.  Scroll to "Xitron".



An example of how the Meteor section of this INI file looks:

[Meteor]

MeteorConfigXdpi=600

SendPDs=1

NextJobPreStartPageCount=0

HeadsPerPCC=2

NumberOfPCCs=5


To change a value, edit the part after the equals sign "=".

e.g. NumberOfPCCs=4


To add a new line from the options described below, just put the cursor somewhere after the [Meteor] heading, hit return to begin a new line, and paste or type one of them in.


If your INI file has no Meteor section, add it.  Type it or copy and paste it from this document, above. Add line items as necessary.


An explanation of  the possible entries for the Meteor Section of the XiSpooler ini file.

NextJobPreStartPageCount=4

                This value is used for back to back jobs ( i.e. jobs run consecutively without pause between them).  It is the number of pages remaining in the current job when we consider that job complete and start sending the next back to back (chained job).  This value might need to be increased from the default if chained jobs are under-running on the press.   This value governs when we begin the next job.  

 

 To clarify: this is the number of pages remaining to output on the press when we start sending the next job to Meteor.  This may need to be adjusted to a larger value if there is a gap on the paper between back to back jobs.  There is time needed to get the next pages for the next job sent to Meteor and have Meteor load them onto the cards to be ready to output.  This value specifies how many pages left in the first job are left to output before we start the next job.  At the default value, we need to start sending the next job to Meteor and Meteor needs to get those pages loaded onto the card during the time it takes to output the last 4 pages of the first job.  If that’s not enough time and the press under-runs on a chained job, then this number should be increased.


NumberOfPCCs=0

                This must be set to the number of PCCs in the Meteor System. e.g. NumberOfPCCs=1

 

HeadsPerPCC    Default Value = 0

                This must be set to the number of PrintHeads per PCC in the Meteor System. e.g.  HeadsPerPCC=2

 

NumberOfSubsystems=1

                This must be set to 2 for the dual resolution implementation.  If you are not using dual resolutions in a single job this does not apply.   Default value is 1.  If the entire line is missing the system defaults to 1.  

 

MasterPCC=1

                This must be set to the PCC number that is acting as the Master.  This will vary for dual resolution systems depending on the number of PCCs in the system.  This is required so that we know which PCC to send the commands to such as enabling and disabling Product Detect and setting the Product Detect Interval.  Default is 1.

 

SimMode=0

                This line should not be in a production system INI file.  Useful only when not connected to Meteor electronics.  Default is 0, which is the same as if the entire line is missing.   You can set it to 1 if you have a correctly configured emulation system installed.  (see DFE "demonstration mode", which is different to this)

 

SendPDs=1

                This sets the mode (1 = Use Internal Product Detect) that XiSpooler starts in.  This can be changed programmatically without restarting XiSpooler via the System Device WebAPI Commands.  Default is 1.  The other value is "0".  A zero value means you are using an external product detect method. 

 

Updated information:  

  • If the line does not appear, then the default is used.  So, in the absence of SendPDs=x you will get the default value of "1"
  • A test app exists which uses Xitron's API. It is called XiMeteor Control Panel (deprecated now that the DFE can do this). In the paragraph above, we describe changing the product detect mode without restarting the spooler via API commands.  This test app can do that for you.  It is a simple, 2 function app.   It will adjust the cross-printer alignment of the output (X offsets) and toggle between Internal and External Product Detect modes.
  • It is important to understand how product detect mode works.  When using our RIP, you must set product detect with our system.   We change the Meteor product detect mode at the start of the job to the mode the spooler is set to.   The spooler INI setting controls which PD mode the spooler uses when it starts up.  But, as described above, you can change modes while the spooler is running with API commands or with the XiMeteor test app.
  • Product Detect (known to some people as "Top of Form" or "TOF") is how the printheads are instructed to fire at the correct time.  In external mode a cylinder or a sensor will send the signal to the print controller.  In internal mode, the Navigator system will tell the Meteor system about the repeat length of the job and then the Meteor system generates the signal over and over until all of the pages are printed.


MaxDocsToBuffer=20

                This determines the number of pages that should be buffered before turning on the Product Detect Signal (starting output on the press)  If the press under-runs at a high speed, there are two options: slow down the press speed, or increase this value.  The value is a number of pages in a print job.  

 

MinPagesForBackToBackJobs=9

                In order to qualify for running back to back (chained) jobs, the job must have at least this many pages.  

9 is the value that worked reliably for back to back jobs when we first implemented it.  It probably needs to be adjusted higher for higher ( or dual) resolution jobs and / or when running at faster speeds.  You can try any values you like.  It’s the minimum number of pages required in a job to be eligible for running as a back to back job.  So if the user has 4 jobs and runs them back to back and the number of pages being output for the jobs are 10, 15, 7, and 20.  The first two jobs will run as back to back jobs, but when we see that the third job only has 7 pages and is less than the specified 9 required for back to back jobs, it will run as a new job with a large gap preceding it and the fourth job will also run as a new job with a gap because the third job will not chain to any others.  This takes into account the Number of Copies for a job, so if it is a one page job but you are running 10 copies, then it qualifies as being over 9.

(update June 30, 2020:  a separator page is a special case and is supported regardless of what number you have set here.  If you send a job consisting of a single page between longer jobs, it should still job-chain)

 

NozzleWidth=240

                This is the width of the Nozzles per 300 dpi.  240 is the default.

This is used in calculating the PD Interval to account for the distance of the nozzles on the press.  If print impressions are overlapping a tiny bit then this value can be adjusted higher which will directly increase the PD Interval.

 

MeteorConfigXdpi=600

                This needs to be set to the same value as the Xdpi parameter in the Meteor Config File of the Meteor system.  The value is dependent on the possible values for your printhead.

 

PDIntervalScaleFactor=0

                This should not normally be set.  The default value of 0 means to pick up the value from the scale factors set in the System Device inside the User Interface of Navigator Server.  This is normal usage.  The line should not be in a normal, production system.  It is available for cases where we need to experiment with this value. It simply multiplies the PD Interval by the value that is set here (that is, if it is not 0).  Basically it is an override for testing, development, and troubleshooting.  If you have this in your ini and you don't know why, then delete it.


XOffsetMode=0 - This controls how the XOffset Adjustment is applied to the Meteor PCCs.  It defaults to 0.  If it is set to 0, then the it sets the XOffset Adjustment on the Master PCC.  Setting it to a value greater than 0 will apply the adjustment starting at the Master PCC and to consecutive PCCs.  


Example case 1.   A 4 color press.  

This value should be 0, which is the default.


Example case 2.   A 5 color press with 10 PCCs.  (i.e. 2 printheads wide, 5 deep.  e.g CMYK + white)

If there are 10 PCCs in the system and the Master PCC is set to 9, (in the Xitron spooler INI file, "MasterPCC=9") and this XOffsetMode value is set to 2, the XOffset adjustment will be applied to PCC 9 and 10 because this value of 2 tells it to apply it to 2 PCCs starting at the Master PCC number.  This is the correct way to propagate settings to two subsystems. 

 

Example case 3.  A 5 color press with 5 PCCs, 

If there are 5 PCCs in a 5 color system and the master PCC is 5, then this value being set to 1 will apply our XOffset Adjustment to PCC 5.