Printing Knowledge

Two printed sheets can look like an exact color match at the printer's bench and clearly different when checked in a client's office. The paper has not changed, and the ink has not changed. What changed is the light. Human color judgment depends heavily on the conditions around the object being v...…

Name Thickness/mm Name Thickness/mm
80gsm art paper 0.065 105gsm matt coated paper 0.09
105gsm art paper 0.085 128gsm matt coated paper 0.12
128gsm art paper 0.105 157gsm matt coated paper 0.16
157gsm art paper 0.135 200gsm matt coated paper 0.19
200gsm art paper 0.17 210gsm matt coated paper 0.21
210gsm art paper 0.19 230gsm matt coated paper 0.23…

Books are judged before a single word is read. The block either sits square inside the cover or it does not, and the difference is usually a millimetre or two at the trim. Cutting and trimming are the last steps that touch every copy in a run, so the tolerances set here decide how the finished bo...…

Perfect binding, often called adhesive binding, carries most of the softcover work that leaves a digital press: novels, catalogs, manuals and annual reports. The method is efficient, but it leans on a long chain of mechanical settings, and one adjustment that drifts can turn a clean book into a r...…

Ink trouble seldom announces itself in advance. Swelling, gelation and the settling that hardens into cake tend to appear once a job is already on the press, with paper loaded and a delivery date fixed. Most of the fixes that circulate through the trade are reactive: the fault shows up first, and...…

Think about the human body for a moment. Someone who pays attention to preventive medicine and looks after their health has a better chance of staying free of illness, living longer, and enjoying an easier life. A printing press behaves in much the same way. When a press runs without breakdowns, ou…

Imported perfect binding equipment falls into two main families, and the difference is not only mechanical. The arrangement of the stations decides how a book …

Book production has always followed the machines that carry it. For most of the nineteenth century a print shop printed the sheets and a separate bindery folded, gathered and finished them, so the two halves of the trade worked to their own schedules. That split faded once printing and binding we...…

Long holiday breaks create a quiet problem for shops that run universal flatbed printers and garment color printers. The machine sits unused for a week or mor…

A press operator running a Heidelberg Gallus 410 recently described a stubborn problem. The color on the sheet ran dark in one band and light in the next, and the fault was most obvious on a heavy solid blue. The anilox roller, the stainless steel doctor blade and the press itself were new, and t...…

Why Single-Color Machines Allow Different Choices A single-color offset press lays down one ink at a time. Because only one printing unit runs per pass, the demands placed on consumables are easier to meet than on a four-color machine, where four units, four blankets and four ink trains have to h...…

Color difference complaints are among the most persistent headaches in printing and packaging, and the pressure is highest for plants that live on export orders. Anyone who has worked with color management will say the same thing: standardization and stability sit underneath every method and ever...…

Rubber rollers carry ink and fountain solution from the ductor to the plate on every offset press, and the figures on a roller specification sheet are not fixed values. Hardness, diameter and surface condition all move with temperature, with the way the press is set, and with the chemistry the ru...…

Gravure tension control matters most on web-fed presses. Sheet-fed gravure has no tension problem to solve, because each sheet is held by grippers and registered by front and side lays while the press is momentarily stationary under impression. Rotary gravure runs differently. The substrate advan...…

Conductive ink screen printing builds the tracks that carry current on membrane switches, printed circuit boards, RFID antennas, and flexible circuits. The layer is thin, the line width is fine, and the printed track holds a measured resistance, so the process leaves little room for drift. A smal...…

Reverse UV, matte UV and matte embossing all put a fine grain on a printed surface. Each one gives packaging a soft, substantial touch that reads as considered rather than slick. Where they differ is in how the grain is made, what it feels like under a finger, and how well it survives handling. T...…

Print buyers, sales staff, and production people judge a printed job by different standards, yet they all use the same word: quality. A sheet that passes the press operator may fail the customer, and the opposite happens as well. The reason is that color judgment depends on conditions, such as th...…

Ink gelation is a fault that printers and ink makers have dealt with for decades. It appeared most often in older oil-based inks, the kinds that dry by oxidation or by penetration into the paper. Solvent-based inks, which dry by evaporation, and water-based inks run into it less frequently, but t...…

Flexographic presses have become the default choice for food packaging, medicine packaging and a wide range of other printed products, mainly because the process is efficient and kinder to the environment than several alternatives. Yet the same question keeps coming back from production managers:...…

An inkjet coder is only as reliable as its printhead. The printhead is the most delicate part of the machine, and the way it is handled day to day decides both print quality and how long the head keeps working. Small, consistent habits cost little time, and they protect the single most expensive...…