Toko R2, 3302 and similar presses for 4/c work - having some issues need advice

I recently purchased a used Toko R2 SL model portrait 2 color press very similar to a Ryobi 3302 but in many ways a different animal. It is a very nice press, leverless operation, Ternes clamps with matching punch, etc. I don't care for the Tokomatic dampeners though seems similar to Multi's old bareback system. Crestline's have me spoiled but they are not available for this machine or Kompac either but I have another alternate dampener as good or better than Crestline that I am eyeing.

Anyway, my goal is to print quality process color in house for anything from 500 to 20,000 or maybe more. I currently broker what I have to, but I am in rural GA and although you can buy 4/c work cheap, the shipping is expensive. Logistics and time frame is an issue and I would much rather print it myself on my time line, have quality control of it in-house and make the labor on it as well as markup. Besides if I can accomplish this I can offer same day or next day turnaround and charge a premium for it on rush, or just knock em down with that kind of turn around at regular competitive prices.

So I invested in a Purup Eskofot Genesis DPX capstan platesetter (portrait 13.3"x20" plate size 35um spot size 2400 dpi 8 mil poly plate RipMate 4.2 with Harlequin Precision Screening). 1 & 2 color plates are great but I got to have it calibrated for 4 color as I am loosing to much highlight dots at present. The machine originally was advertised to do 4/c work when it sold new, the tech tells me to stick with 1 and 2 color and 133 lpi @ 1800 dpi but I would prefer 150 to 175 lpi, and I think that with the HPS feature it should be capable.

One thought was to go another route such as iCTP or another inkjet CTP but that's another topic.

Anyway, so next I bought the Toko R2 from the original owner. They got a 3304 and had not run it in a while. I got such a good deal it was more than worth the 1800 mile trip to go get it even if it only will do 2/c work but I believe it is capable of nice 4/c (better than pleasing but not National Geographic quality somewhere in the middle).....I have been spending my spare time since October cleaning it thoroughly and going through the machine resetting roller pressures, cylinder pressures & other tolerances to factory spec. per the service manual.

So here are my issues right now after attempting a 4/c job this week (a 2 up 8.5 x11 work & turn on 12x18 #100 Futura gloss text with color bars & marks)

Major issues
1. Quality plates (150 to 175 with no dot loss possibly with FM stochastic screening) poly or metal
2. Upgrade the Tokomatic dampners or rebuild 1 of them (seeing gear marks on plate on op side about 3" wide running length of plate not running clean on tower 1 and makes a whining noise, heavy water form to plate seems to fix but may be to much for poly plates)

Minor issues:
3. MC/BC and BC/IC pressure adjustments and targeting the 2 towers together so I don't stretch the plates on either tower and to achieve perfect fit registration
4. adjustment to lever-less control/solenoid adjustment on tower 2 (water form to plate)
5. Feeder consistency - I never ran a Toko before and don't quite have the hang of the feeder, with some intermittent consistency issues nothing major.
6. Occasionally if feeder misses a sheet I have noticed impression cylinder trips - possibly the photo sensor sensitivity
7. Still need to reset grippers on in-feed drum and impression cylinder (this is just for my own peace of mind that they are correct - doesn't seem to be a problem)
8. Need to check condition of in-feed roller/stop fingers for my own peace of mind for good registration
9. Solve a delivery issue - coated sheets track on star wheel, going to apply NoMark SiliClean film to see if that stops it
10. Fix spray powder system - not getting air flow to the powder unit
11. Last Step - New rollers - don't want to spent 1K on all new rubber rolls until I am sure I can solve all the other issues, they are in good to fair condition with some swell on ends but not severe.

So most of this is minor issues, except for the plates & water system issue. Want to know your thoughts on my thought process of getting this plate setter and press to work to my standards and if I should sink $4K in new continuous dampeners for this press and possibly $18-20K or more on a new plate setter or cut my losses. I could still send out for 4/c film but who does that nowadays and that adds to my logistics problem...

If you have a Toko R2 or a Ryobi 3302 I would like to hear about it if you run 4/c work and if you have had any similar or same issues I am having above.

Thanks for your 2 cents...

 

One big problem with that toko is the electric eye.
when powder or fiber builds up under the eye, it will trip the impression cylinder.
If you are having a problem with tripping on misfeeds, try a heavier spring on the solenoid that is on the operator side next to the impression latch.
Take the cover off and look for an upside down L shaped lever next to a push pull solenoid. look for it to disengage when idling and engage when on impression.
They have alot more if-then-goto circuits than a ryobi.
Good luck and happy printing.

 

How's it coming with the R2? I just completed 11 yrs on one. Be happy to help if you need.

Bob

 

Bob,
Thanks for the offer for help!
The biggest problem I have is with the dampening system, the "tokomatic", not a real big fan of them after using it for a few months. Tower 2 prints ok but tower 1 was having difficulty keeping the plate clean.

I set the form to plate at about 4mm stripe parallel, paralleled the oscillator to the form, on the spring loaded ductor I ran the spring all the way in on both sides, then I droped the water lever and inched the press untill the ductor was forward most to the oscillator and set the top adjustment knobs until the ductor made constant contact with the oscillator at 5 on the water adjustment knob (5 on the scale). All this seems to be right inline with the service manual.

Put plate on the press (using the silvermaster digiplates) and drop water to plate let run a few revolutions, then the ink forms. The non-op side was running clean, the op side about 2 inches in and about 3 inches wide running almost the entire length of the plate had clean plate then ink then clean plate repeating (inked area and clean area appeared to look almost like teeth gear marks.) I can't find any gears binding and all cylinder pressures are correct and parallel. Everything is oiled and greased well with no obvious binding anywhere. The water unit does make a slit whining noise. The pan roller is gear/chain driven by the oscillator shaft/gear. The chain has a little more play in it than on tower 2 but I don't believe that is the culprit. Any suggestions???

 

discountprintingservice
Sounds like you have a great deal of time into this aminal, i would try and get some metal plates from a local supplier to test, or another printer. Currenttly using a Plate Writer2000 thermal unit, really good plates. Even with metal plates I notice when rollers need to be changed, I start getting weid print issuses. But I have to be honest I have never seen a R2, and only you can tell when it's time to cut it loose. Good Luck
FSA

 

Dear ...

I read through your mail in detail:

I have already sent you a request for service manual, for the machine.

I have this machine with me for the past 8 Years. Have tried to print 4 colour jobs 12x18, These are the problems I found :

1. The registration will be okay on the front edge. To get the perfect registration at the rear end of the paper is a different proposition. as you have mentiioned the paper starts to misfeed once there is a feed jam. Resetting the feeder knobs again and again resulting in mis registration.

2. Since the machine feeds Portrait, there were lot of issues with paper wrinkling etc.,

May be, I am too late in seeing your post. If you have come acrosss the solutions theses problems, Please share.

 

start using metal plates people how can you possibly think you can run 4 color process with a poly plate. I mean im sure its possible but you will go thru a few plates due to stretching. metal metal metal can't stress it enough

 

Hi Guys,

I have read through all your posts on this thread. I have a two colour press (Toko) and have tried for a long time to run 4 colour work on it. There are just too many problems with feeding, registration, ink/water balance etc. I noticed that you have spent or are intending to spend some serious cash getting the right peripheral equipment and add ons for your machine in order to get the 4 colour work right. I tried the same - spent tons of money getting the press back to as near original as possible - even imported spares!! It just did not work. The Toko is not really suitable for 4 colour work in my opinion. Also, if you are looking to supply colour work on demand, why go through all this hassle and spend that much money???

I have settled for an easier solution....... I just had a Heidelberg QM 46-4 DI installed. We are about to run our first job on it today! You should consider this if you intend doing lots of on demand colour work in quick time. You don't even have to make plates the old fashioned way - the machine does it for you.

Have you considered this option?

Regards

 

Most small shops cant even begin to think about getting a Heidelberg they cost to much and to much cost to keep it going you gotta have a high demand for full color if you wanna justify the cost. i have looked into them many times but the boss keeps saying no no no and no. I can turn a full color job out on my 9985 in two days (three days for two sided gloss), first day is printing (second day printing other side for gloss), second day bindery(third day bindery for two sided gloss). If i had a dryer i could do it in two days with a gloss sheet.

 

I've been running 4/c process on a 3302 with poly plates for a number of years. Grain direction is important but not necessary. Use 70# instead of 60# when possible. Fountain solution(UniTrol 192) works best IMO when using non-metal plates. Set impression right(light) and you should be good. As for your plates inking on one side or the other... only seen that when the water in the pan is too low.

 

GUYS , GUYS

have nothing against 2 color printing proccess or TOKO , but this is not the way to get GOODS RESULTS !
If you put a lot of effort in to it you will maybe get reasonable results , but never good ones.

If you want to get good printing results , get a real press - it can be a 2 color press or even a one color press , but a TOKO was not built for this and will never evr give you good results in 4 colors.#

Sorry to say , you are taking the wrong path to quality !

Good luck

 

Ok, I haven't been on here in a while, so I will update everyone on my progress. First I have all my problems with the press corrected. I had a hard time understanding some adjustments in the service manual as the japanese to english translation wasn't the best but after slowly reading through it I got a good understanding of it all.

As for the press problems:
On tower 1 there was 2 gears that drove the water system off the plate cylinder gears. The bushings of those two gears were wore out (less than $100 for new ones) which caused the gears to move up & down and cause the gear streaks. The feeder problem was bad/old sheet separators - the new ones made a huge difference and also I was running my pile height about 1/4 inch to high on the feeder, for the bellows type suckers, the pile height is different on the toko than on the ryobi but almost everything else on the feeder is the same.

The rest of the problems were just adjustments that had to be set back to factory specs (I just misinterpreted the manual initially due to the bad translation) and I did put new rollers in the press. One problem I did find was the punch marks on the gears for the plate cylinder & blanket cylinder on tower 1 were off by 2 or 3 teeth which let the bend on the leading edge of the plate/plate cylinder make contact with the blanket - so it wasn't a water problem scumming as much as was the cylinders were not lined up properly causing the lead edge of the plate to pickup ink and mark the blanket. That was a pain to fix cause I had to drop the BC down line up the punch marks on the gear and put back in place. But between that and the new gears that eliminated all my water problems.

But anyway, the press runs & prints like a dream now....I ran a 62,000 run a few weeks back 2/2 spot color and it was like running a new press. The tokomatic dampeners really run very good now that I understand them and have them adjusted properly.

As far as Ziggy's, Maverick's, and Meny's comments above, I have to disagree strongly and here is why:

I upgraded to a DPX 5080 drum polyester platesetter (3600 dpi) and I am in the process of calibrating my Epson 7600 printer for Gracol Contract Quality Proof Grade 1. As soon as I have a quality proof to the Gracol/G7 standards I am going to linearize the new CTP plates and then plate a job to the toko and calibrate dot gain values for the press and also gray balance.

Once that is done, I will be running all 4/c jobs to Gracol standard ink densities, which will make my press sheet match my calibrated proofs. And I have tested the press since I got it back to good running condition, and it will register as good as any pull guide press if you set it up correctly.

So if you can register the sheet, and run with calibrated dot gain values and have gray balance while maintaining Gracol standard ink densities, you can produce work on any small press that will look as good as any large sheet fed press.

Someone will dispute me but I have done this before for other printers I have worked for on different presses.

And I have worked for shops running heidelberg presses where they expected you to match by eye to an uncalibrated proof with a press that was not finger printed with variying densities from 1 job to another depending on which manager was checking your sheets to the proof...

Doing it the correct way by running to density instead of eyeballing color - my 4 color looks hands down better than the quality we got off that heidelberg....

Any small press can print just as good (within its sheet size limitations) as any large commercial press IF you can register the sheets AND properly set up the press (mechanically and fingerprinted)....many don't believe this but you have to see it for yourself....that is how I was convinced years ago, back when press salemen said "now that small press won't print like a big press"....

I have got less than a $5000 total investment in my Epson 7600 proofer, my Toko R2 press, my Gretag Densitometer and the DPX5080 drum plate setter and I can produce excellent quality work with it....so the spare time I put into the Toko is justified in my mind.

So who is better off the big commercial shop with a half a million dollar Heidelberg or Komori with hefty lease payments and all the expenses that go with it?

Or me with my paid for small press equipment???

 

the only thing i can add is why litho 500 full colour sheets? digital was created for this work, also i have a 3302 and personally i wouldnt run any decent 4 colour job with poly plates.. stick to metal plates. also i print all my films off myself, and they are pretty good 4 most of the work i do, if someone wants a 1st class colour job though.. imagesetter and metal plates or metal platesetter are a must even for us small copy print shops.

 

Agreed with plotter, poly is good for short runs but not 4c work. I also make my negs and plates in house and I get by just great, if I need a really nice halftone I do have to have it output tho, and I get good feed back from all customers on 4 color work.