Printing in cold weather

with the recent cold sweeping across europe has anybody got tips for printing in cold environments.
Im having trouble getting colour up in the mornings these days with the extreme cold

sometimes i leave my ink tins on the radiators in our offices to warm them up before printing. i hate running cold paper too just off the truck

 

my lads leave the press idling at washup speed for a good 15 mins first thing in the mornin, warms the rollers up and helps warm the pressroom up. also spray the blankets with anti oxidant befire you run, so you dont get any of the first few sheets sticking to the blankets

 

You could do as previously mentioned, although run the machine at a higher speed, slightly reduce your ink and have the ink ducts on full sweep to warm.
As a matter of course i always handwash blankets last thing and auto/hand first thing

That said, in my opinion there is no real substitute than to heat your building correctly and allow sufficient time for your paper to acclimatise

 

i like to idle the press with the compressor running for awhile on a monday morning. its more than just the rubber contact that causes problems with a cold press. Cold cylinders also make for their own issues. When i ink up the first job on a monday morning i like to ink up all units about 20 percent heavier than needed so that i minimize the dreaded ink picking on horizontal lines across the form. A thicker ink film is less tacky than a thinner ink film!!! At times even that is not enough. I occasionally find myself having to add some gel compound to the black ink just to get the thing started up in the morning. And this is with a late model press with tempeture controlled inker.

 

You'd better turn on the power everyday,or will block nozzle.

 

Sorry sunfly, these are litho PRESSES not inkjet printers

Our pressroom has never had heating but after a couple of hours running it gets up to around 20ºc even when its -10ºc outside. Our guys do run the press for around 10-15mins usually with ink on.

 

Hi,
as well as the above suggestions, equally as important is to re-set your damp pan rollers and reduce the amount of damp on each unit,example- on heidelbergs take the damp down about 10%( make a note of the readings before you take them down)on each unit. The reason for this is, firstly the damp system pan rollers could shrink a little . i'ts always best practice to back them off if the press is to be left standing for any length of time. secondly when the press and pressroom temperatures are up to their normal level the damp evaporates from the plate quicker so you need a bit more damp, when you start in the morning temperatures are down so you dont need so much damp, even after running the press for 20minutes. the exess damp in the ink rollers will hold your ink back. Another thing to remember is that your inking rollers could shrink back a little as well after they have been washed up say on a friday night then you get back in on a monday and the ink does not transfer down from the duct properly, this is because ink will swell the rubber so even if you have been checking your settings during the previous week monday could be different, added to that equation is the age and quality of the rubber compound used to make the rollers, cheap rollers sound good to the boardroom. hope this helps . regards john

 

I don't have any idea to break cold...
You should wait to come winters.....

 

Yes a most erudite response ... it's English Jim, but not as we know it

 

lol..........some people !!!

 

Certainly temperature plays an important role in each and every subject of life. When it comes to printing in cold summer to my experience there should be moderate temperature set for the printing environment to have more beneficial results.

 

dowprinting.com? Sounds like a HK outsource to me.

But in the helpful and occasionally sarcastic spirit of the forum I suggest you use spell check before uploading your website

 

I would like to wish blessings of God for you for alarming me about the grammatical mistakes in the uploaded website. It seems to be designer mistake while designing the banner for the website.

 

Don't mean to be rude, but what in the heck does this mean? What is your specific advice for the OP? I'm sure if he could turn up the thermostat he wouldn't be asking for advice printing in colder than optimal conditions.

 

You are right XFactor I haven't left any useful tips regarding printing in cold weather. Here is some useful article that can be beneficial for printing in cold weather.

http://www.redrivercatalog.com/infocenter/tips/cold-weather-inkjet-printing.html

 

Dow Printing is printing on an inkjet printer ???

 

No Dow Printing is offset and digital printing company..

 

Dow Printing's offset work is run on a Solna?

Didn't mean to give you grief, but it seemed really odd that you linked to an inkjet printer site for advice to give an offset guy, but I guess humidity is humidity and static is static (?!?)

 

Yes it run on Solna since Dow Printing is an offset printing company as well.

I don't mean you to be rude but I think your question doesn't make any sense...

 

No worries,

What Solna are you running?