Make sure your prepress workflow is flawless.
30% of each colour, full sheet tone to test for defects in blankets, uneven colouring etc.
concentric rings, to test that no movement, doubling of print
Linearisation on setter and in press. (documenting is key to repeatability)
I would run the GATF suite of tests. You can check their web site for the latest. It can be quite overwhelming to run all the tests, so I recommend getting professional consulting for the first time that you do it. Take good notes and you won't need them again. I know Ray Prince with NAPL does this type of service and he'll be brutally honest with the quality of your press. Good luck!
GATF has some nice mechanical test forms, and Idealliance is developing a G7 pre qualification test form. You can check it out on the g7global.org website. Basic elements you will want are ladder targets to check for movement, register targets, solid bars around the cylinder to measure density falloff.
The 30% tint test lukas mentioned is a good one. We added single color tints to see which units were problematic.
I would recommend getting Fuji or Pitman to help. For 6 K a Fuji guy was with us for 3 days doing three profiles for our SM52 and for our Oris proofer. We did was download the idealiance target and ran them linear and kept our densities as close as we could then sent the trainer a copy so they could look at it to determine if there might be a mechanical problem with our press that would interfere with the qualification. The preliminary test they found no problems and then we scheduled them to come out.. After the three days we were able to do our own G7 profiling. You will need a plate reader, densitometer and a photo spectrometer and a bunch of stock. You will only be able to qualify coated stock. Uncoated stock will not produce a good enough color gamut to qualify.
press tests prior to profiling
Linear Mode
