Turn your folding machine into a powerful, integrated folding and creasing machine. Fits more than 70 models including MBO, Stahl, Baumfolder, Horizon, Vijuk (G&K), MB (GBR), Econocrease, Rotocrease, Pierce, Rollem, Rosback, Morgana and more!
Brad Lena is a staff consultant at PIA/GATF where he specializes in the digital printing market, particularly the sale, development, and production of variable data marketing campaigns. As a consultant he positions printers for success by helping them align their investments in digital presses, software, and people with their business environment. Lena shares his hard-earned lessons with clients and helps them adjust their business and production approach to tap into this high-profit area.
Dan Remaley is a senior technical consultant at PIA/GATF specializing in process controls—the measurement of production standards to maintain a level of acceptable tolerances in the print manufacturing process. He helps printers install systems to minimize variation in proofs, plates, and presswork, with the goal of more consistent color and less waste. He is also an industry pioneer in the use of gray balance to maintain consistent color on press, a principle since adopted in new guidelines for commercial lithography.
Dan Remaley, Senior Technical Consultant, PIA/GATF
Most recently there has been a lot of discussion about “printing to gray balance”. The new GRACoL (G7) guidelines describe the methods to achieve gray balance at press.
What’s so important about gray balance at press?
The concept of gray balance is essential for excellent color reproduction in scanning, proofing, and in the pressroom. In scanning, images that are not in gray balance are considered “casted.” Images that are casted show a magenta, cyan, or yellow (or combinations of M-C-Y) color appearance in the highlights, midtones, and/or shadows. Casted images require color correction to remove the unwanted colors. Images that are in gray balance only need to be adjusted for specific areas of color enhancement, i.e. greener grass, or bluer skies.
Proofing systems must be able to reproduce neutral gray without any cast as well. If the file is correct and the proofer introduces a cast, then all the color is shifted away from gray balance. A proof that is casted will require the press to print away from neutral gray to match the proof.
The little “secret” of process color printing at press is that you can only print two ways on press - in gray balance or casted - that’s it! You are either neutral throughout the tone scale, or you are casted in some way. If you’re casted, color reproduction suffers.
The fact is that all press operators abide by this principal. Press operators look at a printed press sheet and notice casts of too much magenta, cyan, or yellow and reduce whichever color is creating the cast. The control for the press operator is more or less ink, however the TVI, or dot area, is equally important. The press operator can’t change the size of the dots on the plate, but he or she can change the gain by adding or subtracting ink.
The major problem in printing today is that the values on the plate are incorrect. The values on the plate need to be adjusted for all four colors; each color Y-M-C-K needs its own plate curve to reproduce neutral gray at press. A lot of printers have only one plate curve for all colors! The other issue is weight - how dark or light is your midtone reproduction? Screen builds and Photoshop images are adjusted for around a 20% TVI, or midtone gain, meaning a 50% patch will print as a 70% value. Most linear plates (50% = 50%), gain around 14 to16% on press, and print too light for separations created in Photoshop.
The majority of printing plants I encounter have this platemaking problem. It is impossible for the pressroom to control gray balance and color with the wrong size dots on the plates. The procedure is to print a test form with complete tone scales at the required density.
Next, compare the scales against a standard and adjust the plate values accordingly. Every color bar should include a three-color gray patch represented by 50C-40M-40Y. This patch, when printed at the correct density and dot gain, will appear neutral - without any casts. It can also be measured with a reflection densitometer. The densitometer needs to be set for “ALL” filter readings, now the yellow, magenta, and cyan inks can be measured as a density. When all three filter readings are equal, the patch is neutral. A 0.03 density among all three filter readings is the tolerance for an acceptable neutral appearance.
If you have not focused on gray balance before, start now because it will be key to improving your printing.
Dan Remaley
PIA/GATF Senior Technical Consultant
412.259.1814 Office
412.889.7643 Cell
dremaley@piagatf.org
More and more printers are recognizing the value of measuring and analyzing the capabilities of the most expensive piece of equipment and the highest cost center in the print production process--their presses. Presses with two to twelve printing units and from 17 inches to 65 inches in size are now being regularly tested for reasons ranging from purchase/installation acceptance to quality control and color management.
The Printer’s Hidden Factory of Waste
Ken Rizzo, PIA/GATF Director, Consulting Resource Group
Typically waste is thought of in the context of paper waste, such as makeready waste, roll slab waste, print waste, etc. However, according to Lean Practices, Waste is the $$$ cost of time and materials that consume resources, but don’t add any actual value to the product, or result in product that is unacceptable to the customer. These waste activities are also known as non-value-added activities. There are Eight Issues of Waste in what is known as the Hidden Factory.
Waste from Overproduction: Overproduction is when the amount produced by one process is more than the next process needs or can handle. The result is large amounts of product spending long periods of time in WIP. Typical symptoms of overproduction include pulling jobs off a machine in the middle of a production run to make room for another job, production overtime that customers don’t pay for, large amounts of floor space clogged with skids of WIP, process bottlenecks, and warehouses filled with finished goods inventory.
Waste from Waiting: Processes and people waiting for other processes to complete activities, the curse of downtime, machine breakdowns, and failures are all non-value-added waste.
Waste from Unnecessary Transporting: The time spent and extra equipment utilized to frequently valet tooling, materials, and WIP loads around the plant is non-value-added waste.
Over-Processing Waste: The extra time spent on processing jobs due to long equipment changeover (makeready), continually quick-fixing quality-related print problems, redundant actions and activities required due to poor job planning, inadequate materials, and sudden mechanical problems from substandard press and equipment conditions.
WIP and Inventory Waste: The cost of floor space, associate time and materials waiting in queues for further processing, and warehousing finished goods prior to delivery to customers then waiting for payment is waste.
Waste of Motion: Includes time spent searching for and retrieving tooling and materials, process layout poor, waste from component installation and settings due to outdated technology and poor component conditions; waste from increased adjustments due to poor operation of equipment mechanisms, quick-fix quality activities due to unacceptable materials (paper, ink, coating, plates, etc.) and job components (production schedule, job tickets, and proofs, etc.), lack of poorly functioning tools and equipment, lack of teamwork and process organization.
Waste from Product Defects: Time and materials wasted producing defective product. Waste from product defects includes employee time spent, materials, and equipment utilized inspecting and sorting defective product, and in identifying and handling non-conforming product.
Waste of People: Includes not utilizing people’s mental, creative, and teamwork abilities. Waste through the existence of antiquated thinking, department politics, resistance to change (not invented here), fear of repercussions to new ideas from a not-invented-here culture, lack of timely feedback, poor hiring practices poor, and little or no investment in effective training.
Non-value-added activities are where we must target our process improvement initiatives to reduce costs, eliminate waste, and increase capacity. Once non-value-added activities are identified and defined, we can really begin our quest in the elimination of true waste and spoilage. Remember, waste and spoilage are like Hidden Inventories; they are costs that we will never be reimbursed by our customers.
“With market pressures to reduce prices, printers today have no choice but to reduce and control all their costs”
Ken Rizzo, PIA/GATF Director of Consulting.
PIA/GATF Consulting Resource Group
The Benefits of Print: A Fresh Look The numerous changes in communications technologies and preferences have blurred the many reasons why print remains a viable and important medium in what often seems to be an over communicated marketplace. In light of the communications upheavals of the last decade, it is important to reiterate the benefits of print.
In 2003, Dr. John Zarwan published his benchmark study of operating costs for CTP - “CTP Plate Making: Understanding the Real Costs.” Dr. Zarwan’s study revealed some important truths about CTP plate making - that incremental post imaging costs for CTP systems were neither well tracked nor fully understood.
The move to computer-to-plate has increased the productivity and efficiency of printers by simplifying the production process and streamlining workflow. Despite the cost savings achieved by moving from film-based plate making to CTP, there are still important costs incurred in getting the plate from the platesetter to the press. Most printers accept these as unavoidable costs of doing business, and therefore do not track these costs very carefully.
Printing Impressions 400
The Printing Impressions 400
