Combined-print

[sector6]

I am currently working in a printing company and we supply our customers with cartons to put in their products.

We are looking at the idea to implement combined-printing (i.e. each page we print contains more than 1 product type) to save cost for manpower and to reduce the set-up time. What are the things I should look for to implement this and what are the restrictions for the type of products to be printed together (e.g. only similar colored products can be chosen for combined-printing)?

More info: we are using the KBA 105 and 108.

 

[arossetti]

Are you talking about ganging up jobs? If so you could look at several different software packages like Impostrip or EFI Metrix.

 

[Deleted member 16349]

I am currently working in a printing company and we supply our customers with cartons to put in their products.

We are looking at the idea to implement combined-printing (i.e. each page we print contains more than 1 product type) to save cost for manpower and to reduce the set-up time. What are the things I should look for to implement this and what are the restrictions for the type of products to be printed together (e.g. only similar colored products can be chosen for combined-printing)?

More info: we are using the KBA 105 and 108.

With packaging, there can be the situation where one does not print to standard densities because a customer or printer might want to push up densities to make the packaging image pop.

This is not such a problem when one is only running a series of the same image but if you are running columns of different packaging images it might be. Especially if the packaging wraps around and there needs to be a match where the package image comes together.

The problem is that if you have these images next to each other and they are done with different densities, then it is hard to maintain the target density at the edges of the package image due to the oscillation on press that is trying to even out ink films laterally.

Matching the back, where the package comes together can be done but it might need compromising the target densities/colour at those locations.

If all your packaging has the same standard density targets, this would make things easier but I suspect, that is not the case. Then the next option is to run images next to each other that are reasonably close in target densities.

This was an issue on web offset presses that we had when I worked for Tetra Pak back in the late 80s and early 90s. You need skilled operators to deal with this issue.

 

[sector6]

@arossetti: Thanks for your input. I'll take a look at the 2 programs.
Erik Nikkanen: The 2 products are printed to the same densities. I'll confirm with the technician later today and will let you know if they are not of the same density. Sorry for not stating this earlier: the printed sheets are used on corrugated boxes for the customer's product............ and on a different note, I'm new to this industry so any guidance from you all will be invaluable

 

[aqazi81]

If its a packaging job then I would say No, yes you can print ganged up jobs but with packaging there are many other things to look for like,
How many Pantone colors are there?
Is it possible to print all those extra colors in one pass?
When finishing the job on die cutter you will need a new die every time you get repeat orders of different jobs.
Otherwise you will waste more paper to produce ganged up cartons.

 

[sector6]

Not sure about the Pantone colours- the usual black, yellow, cyan and magenta on the prints.

 

[davarino]

Gang runs are often a challenge, especially so in the high-quality sectors of the market.

If you are printing "pleasing color" rather than exact matches, you can often do ganging. I suspect that you could do that because you are mentioning only a CMYK inking system.

The best thing is to try ganging a few jobs that are not highly critical and seeing if your pressman AND your customers are satisfied with the results. (The pressman should be most listened to about the difficulty of the run and the customer should be most listened to about the acceptability of the quality. Your pressman MAY be critical of the quality... but if you can sell it it's possibly not "bad", just something that a critical eye would not want.)

So, the crucial question would seem to be: are you matching logo hues and face colors closely, or do your customers not care about them much?

 

[sector6]

@ davario: our customers would definitely want their logos to be 'just'right = the exact match.

 

[sector6]

Just an update:
After delving deeper into the problem, I find out that the reason they do combined-printing is due to the customer orders. If there's an 'urgent' need for a product, they would gang it up with the next printing job. For normal jobs, combined-printing is not done. It seems to me that whether to do combined-printing depends on the customer's order and how 'urgent' it is.

Is there a rule/guideline to choose what products to combine?

 

[sector6]

Another question which I have is: what is the minimum order quantity for the products A and B if you want to gang them together in one job?

Update: the printers technicians told me that the drop in quality due to combined-printing is acceptable by the customers.