Printing Grey Solids with White Out Text

Hi,

Has anybody got any tips for printing a B1 Grey Solid(cant do a dry solid as the job has got white out text), ours tend to come out with a bit of banding. Would love to hear any ideas.

Thanks,

Jon

 

if you know that all your roller settings are correct and that your blanket is in good shape and press is properly packed you might try substituting a bit of opaque white into the mix as opposed to transparent white. Ive seen opaque ink hide lots of sins.

 

If you have more than one unit you might try printing a 40% screen on the first unit and the solid on the second.

And brand new blankets hide alot of sins as well.

 

In the grip edge non printing area on the plate put a 60% screen in, most banding/streaks come from here. Roll the plate forme damper up solid with ink before printing. Have plate inkers as light as possible on the plate, especially the last one. Roller and damper settings need to be spot on in the press. Minimum impression pressure will stop shock marks from cylinder edges and a cork underblanket helps in this respect, especially with a 3 ply blanket as it stops grip edge blanket shocks travelling up the blanket in 'waves'. Any roller marks you get can be identified by measuring where it is from the front of the plate edge to its position on the sheet then dividing by Pi to give a roller diameter. Marks on the front edge generally come from rollers coming off the tail edge of the plate, identifying these is by measuring as above but adding the cylinder gap to it. It sometimes helps to put a screen across the back edge bevel but this can repeat into the solid. A grey solid needs ink to transfer quickly in the rollers to replace ink delivered to the sheet. Too strong an ink with low film weight will give a very narrow ink water balance window and will not transfer quickly, too high a film weight will overwhelm the damping so somewhere in the middle is right but its impossible to estimate, more of a printers 'feel' thing. Have the duct set with more sweep than key opening, this puts a thinner film of ink onto the rollers and distributes quicker than a big blob with low sweep. These are the things I can think of. Hope this is helpful.

YG