Rich black from laser for positives

Hello,
I have a RICOH Aficio SP C811DN printer, and I am having the worst luck getting it to print real rich black. I'm using it to print film positives on polyester vellum for burning silkscreens.
Between the 30+ printer profiles and numerous other settings, there are over 20 million different ways to print one document.
[code]Illustrator Color Management:
2 Choices for Color handling
Let Illustrator determine colors
Let PostScript printer determine colors
30 Printer profiles including:
Generic CMYK
U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2
150-line Pantone
RICOH Aficio SP C811DN
4 Rendering Intent Choices:
Perceptual
Saturation
Relative Colorimetric
Absolute Colorimetric
Printer Dialog Color Matching:
ColorSync or In Printer
Which Profile for ColorSync? Printer profile?
Printer Features:
Color Smoothing: On or Off
Color Mode: Black/White or Color
Gradation: Fast, Standard, Fine
Color Setting: Off, Fine, or Super Fine
Color Profile: Auto, Photographic, Presentation, Solid Color, User Setting, CLP Simulation1, CLP Simulation2
Dithering: Auto, Photographic, Text, User Setting
Gray Reproduction: Black/Gray by K, Black by K, CMY+K, Black/Gray by K (Text only), Black by K (Text only)
Black Over Print: On or Off
CMYK Simulation Profile: Off, US OffsetPrint, Euroscale, JapanColor, PaletteColor[/code]
Add all these options up and you get[b] 24,192,000[/b] different, unique ways to print a document. I really don't have the time to try them all out. How can I make sense of it all? :?:
Do you have any advice? I'm stuck with dark gray printouts. :(
Thanks
-Dodd
Art Department
Calconix, Inc.
TimeZone ®
(888)256-2544
(610)642-5921
(610)642-5928 Fax

make sure your art is 'rich black (color space CMYK-assign new color 40-50-50-100)then...assuming that you have Acrobat--save illustrator file as PDF and print that from acrobat(high quality print setting)...or...further assuming that you have Indesign--save illustrator file as EPS and place in Indesign and print from there.

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Here's a previous discussion of the topic:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/851346?tstart=0
And here's another helpful answer from another forum:
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Screenshot of doc open in InDesign with text selected with black swatch selected:
Screenshot of doc in Acrobat pro seps with black unchecked:

Actually, a better question might be how you avoided the rich black using what you believe are the exact same settings over the past two years!!
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Can I ask are you based in the US?
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Rob Day wrote:
The problem is that often there will be text, or other fine line graphics, etc. that are actually rich black, printing on all plates, and the printer wants only a black plate to avoid registration problems.
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Scott...
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When I create something in AI and save it as PDF document, all Blacks in AI
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Why this is happening?
I'm usign AI CS3 and Acrobat 8.
Preferences in AI:
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Thanks in advance,
Roman

The preferences of "Printing/Exporting: Output All Blacks as Rich Black" is applicable only for printing to RGB printers like the desktop non-postscript printers or when exporting to RGB file formats.
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Rich black from laser for positives

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