scratches and hickies. please help.

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new to the game here, but we are being attacked by scratches on the plates and hickies. the mechanics are now starting to blame the dust in the room or the ceiling tiles.at first the plate cleaners were not getting water which they fixed, but that did not take care of the scratches. A work around is to clean the plate by hand, but we are still getting hickies, and the washup program is not doing it for us. Is it possible the Scratches AND the Hickies are being caused by dust particles in the air? Heidelberg Di Quickmaster is the press i'm running. Checking the ink to see if it is loaded with dust... Can running to much powder cause this problem???? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Most scratches happen at imaging of plates with the black plate being the worse offender on the classic model. After pulling out my hair with scratches and hickeys for over a year I have overcome the problems just by changing a few things. The first thing was to change the bar pressure for the plate cleaners which are set at 5.0. That is Heidelbergs recommendation. It now sits on 3.5. which still cleans the plates but with less pressure.
I manually spool the black plate always, with the vacuum taken out as scratches can occur with spooling, with bits of dust and silicion which sits on the vacuum. This is only on the classic model as on the later 2 models the vacuums move in and out.
Most important now is the dampness of the wash up cloths. The manual says to do 5 pumps. Forget it. I now pump 20 times and make sure the cloth is really wet, almost swimming. On the black plate wash cloth especially I will either manually wind it forward to make sure it is clean or for the first job of the day I will do a short wash on the old plates.
Once a week I blast the machine from top to bottom with air and then wipe it all down. Including the feeder
Now for hickeys, I have managed to get them under control. I changed my ink to DRY RICH SOY, a japanese ink. It is great. It prints great and dries a treat. It is most important that you clean by hand number 7 roller (hard roller) as this is where most of the dry ink sits. It is a bit of a pain but once you get it clean it saves alot of headaches. Get a torch out and see just how much dried ink sits there. Also there is a flat bar under roller no 4. Dust and grime sits there and easily falls down. I use a steel ruler and bookbinding tape to clean it.
2 out of 3 jobs in the past would result in plate scratches, now it is rare. If I do get one I use the the Toray ST-1 to get rid of it.
A little bit of maintenance goes a long way. so does the extra water on the the washup cloths
It is good if you can limit dust and dirt in the factory, but it is not really the answer. Hope this helps.
Macke

1)HEIDELBERG QUICKMASTER DI AGE: 2002

only 3,4 mio imprs

DELTA RIP VERSION 7

as new very good condition



PRICE: 113.000 Euro loaded on truck.





2-)HEIDELBERG QUICKMASTER DI 46-4



AGE: 1996

DELTA RIP

IMPRS 5.MIO

VERY GOOD CONDITION

Price: 33.000 euro loaded on truck.



We have available:



-Video of machine

-Heidelberg Report

-Photos


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new to the game here, but we are being attacked by scratches on the plates and hickies. the mechanics are now starting to blame the dust in the room or the ceiling tiles.at first the plate cleaners were not getting water which they fixed, but that did not take care of the scratches. A work around is to clean the plate by hand, but we are still getting hickies, and the washup program is not doing it for us. Is it possible the Scratches AND the Hickies are being caused by dust particles in the air? Heidelberg Di Quickmaster is the press i'm running. Checking the ink to see if it is loaded with dust... Can running to much powder cause this problem???? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.[/quote]

__________________
Best Regards
Balance Gmbh
Merve Pehlivan
[email]merve.pehlivan@balancegraph.com[/email]

0041 41 242 11 50

DIFFERENT CLASSIC and PLUS model...


about different between Classic and Plus model. "I have a wealth of knowledge for you... Either
machine is a good choice, although there are some differences you should be
made aware of. The Classic machine has 8 ink keys instead of the 12 that the
Plus model has. This is not a huge difference, but in some instances it
proves to make some jobs easier. The ink fountain in the Classic has ink
liners which can be removed an thrown out for a fast clean up. The Plus
machine does not have these and takes a little longer to clean. It is hard to
say which one is an advantage, some say not having to buy ink liners is
cheaper, my personal feeling is most people do not clean the Plus/Pro version
ink fountain properly or quickly which ends up costing the same price as
liners in chemicals and time. Imaging time is 9 minutes on the Classic and 6
minutes on the Plus machine. This proves to be the biggest difference in
terms of production. Depending how efficient your pressman is, this
difference could affect your recievables. There also is a difference in the
feeder, on the Plus machine it disengages duriing imaging due to the
high imaging speeds thus reducing wear to parts. The Classic machine does not
have this feature because the imaging speeds are lower. The Vacuum extraction
units for plate silicone are much easier to service on the Plus version and
have a tendency to keep hickeys out of the ink rollers. It is my personal
opinion you can make money with either machine, the pressman will make
the difference."

__________________
Best Regards
Balance Gmbh
Merve Pehlivan
[email]merve.pehlivan@balancegraph.com[/email]

0041 41 242 11 50

Also, be sure to use Heidelberg branded wash-up cloth material..........the after market brand is no good ......oh yeah also check vacuum head ....silicone can build up fast leading to scatches and hickies
mike

Best place to look for "crap" Is on the gap guards. Make sure there is NOTHING behind thew little black roller. I take mine apert once a moth and clean it. If the wash-up is messy the ink will dry behind that roller thus when the plate advances the dried ink will scratch it.
Tust me I have had enough assclowns putting too much wash up fluid on here and making a mess. Worst ones will be Black and yellow units

I may be talking Apples and Oranges here but I had a huge scratch problem on my Presstek 5334 DI and, after much hunting and testing found out that the rubber "bladder" on the wet towel plate cleaning unit on tower 1 was swollen to a point that it would make contact with the plate as it was running, building up a bunch of ink on the towel material and when the press was stopped would transfer the ink back on the blanket. Also some of the ink would dry a bit and when it made contact it would scratch the plate from one end to the other. The work around was to manually advance the towel material after a new set of plates was imaged and when the press stopped to re-load paper, I manually inched it so the towel bar was on the gap between plates on the cylinder. to replace the rubber bladder the Tech said the unit was $4,000 USD (kinda high, but it was NOT considered a consumable, so it was Presstek's dime).

My 2¢

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[I]"No well engineered plan survives contact with reality"[/I]