Water in Ink Fountain

[BeauchampT]

Thanks for the idea Tamale but, um, yeah tried that first.

Thanks for the varnish suggestion.

[blazini]

On presses that run a fountain metering roller (micrometric or film roller as MAN Roland calls it) the metering roller needs to be set correctly or you will see these problems. If making sure that's set right doesn't help there's 2 other things you can do.

If you run alot of webs that are narrower than the press, you can have prep put mourning bands on the plates. It's just a 50% screen that runs along the ends of the plate where theres no web. The partially inked plate helps keep water out of the roller train. I run a Rotoman with a duo-trol and have never seen a drop of water in the fountain.

On Harris's with brush dampening it's almost a necessity to run air curtains. It can be anything like a copper pipe with small holes drilled along the length, one end is has a hose hooked up to a blower and the other just gets capped off. You mount it so the holes blow air at the first vibrator after the ink fountain it should have a ball valve on the line so you can var the amount of air blown. The idea is that it evaporates all the water out of the ink train and helps tremendously with presses that are hard to manage the ink/water balance. This WILL stop the water from entering the fountain. As long as you have competent maintnence people it's not hard to set up at all.