Thread: Help with varn units please

Hi

Hope somebody can help me. I am running a 3302M ryobi with Varn Compac units. I have had new metering rollers and rubber rollers fitted to both. It's fine when printing uncoated stock but is a nightmare when trying to print gloss art as it seems that the plate is just getting floded with font casing the ink to back up and patchy substandard print. It's worse when the printed area is small and not so bad if a large volume of ink is being printed. I have wasted hours trying to adjust the pressues etc with no joy. I can't seem to reduce the amount of water going to the plate. If anyone could give me some advice on this it would save me a lot of sleepless nights and wasted paper. I'm sure there must be people runing gloss art with Varn units that don't have this problem.

Thanks in advance.

Tighten the metering to the plate form roller. Less water going to the plate.

The Kompacs also have a nip adjustment on each side. This will increase/decrease the amount of water applied to the plate. Try pinching the nip in on each side a bit. You'll see the aluminum dial gauge on each end of the side housings. Adjust them both evenly. Offhand I can't remember the nip setting on mine but 2.5- 3.0 I think is about where it is. I set them and forget them. There is an allen set screw on top of the side plates you loosen to adjust the nip. Remove the water out of there first!!! Tighten to the point you get some feathering on the 12" edge then back off a smidge for more water and test print. I'll check mine next week when I'm back to work if you need more info. Also be sure the occilator roller is in place ans being used. I've also found some digital coated stocks really suck to print on. So try some different brands of stock to be sure it's not just stock related. And of course be sure your using oil base inks. With new rollers you want minimal form to plate pressure. What kind of plates are you running metal or poly? Setup correctly with the right fountain solution these units are no brainers to run.

Just to add...... the nip setting on my Kompacs is 2.0.