Customer's Needs

What does a Sheet-Fed Press owner need?

Reduced set-up time

The worldwide trend for short runs means 5 to 20 jobs per day. This means that many hours per day are spent on set-ups. 20 - 40 minutes per colored job is typical.

The need: Reduce set-up time to 5 minutes per job.

Repeated jobs set-up time

Due to ink key structure, same value settings at different times result in different color densities. Thus set-up time is similar to the one of the first run.

The need: Original color automatic presetting.

Color stability

Color changes during run. Monitoring and corrections are done manually. This is subjective, erratic, time consuming and very wasteful. In short runs colors do not stabilize and the random picking of one sheet in every 100 to 400 is definitely ineffective.

What one needs is a process that controls the colors of every sheet automatically and objectively.

Quality inspection

Print defects are inherent in the offset printing process. It is crucial to identify those defects in time for process control and to note or sort defective sheets for quality control. Random manual sampling of printed sheets means missing many print defects.

The need: Automatic search for print defects and/or sorting printouts as good or bad.

Registration

The need: High accuracy automatic color registration, preferably without specific marks.

Viewing

Presenting printed image on a monitor provides real time visual feedback. This enables the operator to calibrate water/ink balance, and detect defects. This is especially important if no automatic inspection system exists.

The need: Presenting on a monitor a high-resolution image of any chosen sheet, or regions-of interest, without stopping the press.