Heidelberg

NEW YORK, NY—October 24, 2006—TanaSeybert, LLC, the largest privately held company for print management solutions in New York City, today announced that it has made a major expansion of its production capabilities by purchasing the equipment of Graphic Management Inc., a web and sheetfed plant located in Mountainside, NJ. TanaSeybert also has signed a long-term lease to operate in the 50,000-sq.-ft. facility, where production will be integrated and coordinated with activities at the company’s 140,000-sq.-ft. print manufacturing headquarters at 525 West 52nd Street in Manhattan. The new facility has a full complement of press and postpress equipment for all forms of commercial and package printing. The

WASHINGTON, DC—October 11, 2006—The Print Council, a national business development initiative dedicated to the promotion of greater use of printing and print media, today announced the publication of a new, 24-page marketing brochure demonstrating the extraordinary value and effectiveness of print communications. Titled “Why Print? The Top Ten Ways Print Helps You Prosper,” the full-color brochure marks the launch of an ongoing series of strategic activities by The Print Council designed to make a major impact on media decision makers, significantly elevating their awareness of, and appreciation for, the value of print. The first copies of “Why Print?” will be released

KENNESAW, GA—10/10/2006—Heidelberg USA today announced the launch of a new program for small businesses. Called Heidelberg Printers Advantage, the program is designed to connect small printers with information and business solutions to help them solve problems unique to small business enterprises. Printers can learn more about program benefits from a new Website at www.printersadvantage.com or by visiting the Small Business solutions section of the Heidelberg booth #1200 at Graph Expo. “Heidelberg believes that small businesses are the backbone of the printing industry and deserve access to the same benefits and privileges as their larger counterparts,” said James Martin, senior vice president of marketing

The Prinance Print Management System from Heidelberg is a fully functional and easy to use system for estimating and quoting jobs, generating job tickets, managing inventory, collecting production data, and other important functions. Prinance can generate new estimates from a previous estimate or template in five easy steps: • After launching, click on “Order Archive.” • In the bottom-left area of the screen, select “Find” and then select the estimate (labeled ES) that you wish to use as a “template.” • From the menu bar, select “Estimating - Copy”; the “Copying a Transaction” window opens and automatically assigns a new estimate number (which can be overwritten

The criterion for choosing between computer to plate (CTP) systems with violet laser diodes and those with thermal laser diodes is anticipated run length. Unlike thermal plates, silver halide plates for violet technology cannot be post-baked for extended life and thus will run to a maximum of about 350,000 impressions. Violet-sensitive photopolymer plates can be post-baked for runs of one million impressions or more, but their resolution is lower than that of silver halide plates. In terms of print behavior—clean running of the plate, ink/water balance, ink feed, dot gain—and achievable print quality, there is no real difference between violet and thermal technology. Plate throughput

Ink for perfecting has special performance requirements. For instance, to avoid smearing after sheet reversal, the ink of the first impression behind the perfector must not build up on the impression cylinders of the following printing units. To achieve this, the ink must be shorter—less viscous or “flowable”—than normal. Ink manufacturers offer inks especially for perfecting, but if these are not available, the ink can be set short by adding 3% to 5% printing oil. Linseed oil-based additives are particularly recommended because they prevent drying and reduce the ink build-up on the downstream impression cylinders. A short-set ink also reduces trailing of the paper

When running polyester plates on a Printmaster GTO 52 with a direct continuous dampening unit, do not thin the ink with print oil or other additives. Keep the water pan spotless so that no grease gets onto the plate. The dampening system’s pH value should be about 5. (Important: do not add alcohol.) To avoid overstretching the plate during mounting, tighten the tensioning nuts only by hand. Compression between the blanket and the plate cylinders must not exceed .1 mm. Before production, polyester plates must be treated with the sponge-on etching solution recommended by the manufacturer. If printing is interrupted, more etching solution should be

The best way to accurately reproduce a colored paper stock on a proofing device such as the HP 5000 inkjet proofer available from Heidelberg is to create a new target (press) ICC profile using the PrintOpen module of Prinect Profile Toolbox. First, print test patches for PrintOpen using the colored paper to be reproduced on the proofer. Read the values into PrintOpen using a spectrophotometer, and PrintOpen will create a target profile from this data. A quicker but less accurate solution is to bring the existing target profile into PrintOpen for editing. Using a spectrophotometer, read the LAB values from the colored paper to

The best time to make a quality check of printed sheets is either immediately before or during jogging. At this stage, crumpled sheets can easily be sorted out, and the appearance of the remaining sheets can be examined. The sheets also can be checked for even positioning by looking at the cutting marks printed on them. By turning the sheets over while fanning them out, the operator can also detect sheets that have been positioned in the press with their sides incorrectly aligned. Sheets displaying dirty edges because of misalignment can then be removed from the pile. Using a stacklift that can be adjusted to the

Here's a simple but important tip for customers awaiting equipment service calls: before the service technician arrives, make sure to have the parts manual and wiring diagrams for the machine readily available so that time isn't wasted in searching for the documentation once the technician gets there. It's a good idea to inventory your library…