An experiment in Lean?

[Michael Josefowicz]

Again, if we are continuing the discussion concerning Erik's idea about this experiment I believe this could be achieved.

Yes. From my point of view the driver is what Erik is trying to do. If he's correct, RI College gets lots of publicity and increases it's brand as a potential center of innovation in Print. There is a pretty good chance that someone at RI College sees the value of increasing the perception of their brand. And without ANY money invested in "advertising/marketing." Brand goes up, enrollment goes up. Enrollment goes up, everybody is happy.

Problem is there needs to be someone in the college who can manage it. You need someone within the college to communicate with all the local printers and on top of that with Erik on how to make all this work. Whether there is someone in the local area who can do this is an issue, and whether Erik can head off to the small state of "Rho Disland!" would be some things to discuss.

Good points. But, given the capabilites of distance learning, communicating through the internet, my skill set and some contacts I have in RI, I think this could be solved relatively easily. If and only if there is someone at the school who buys in. If that is possible, everything else is doable. If that doesn't happen. Nothing can happen.

Sadly, I have been a resident of this small state in the city of Warwick for about 3 months now! Nice to hear some people who are in the region.

Ah! The wonders of the internet and a special thanks to Print Planet. Ain't life grand?

[mattf]

Yes. From my point of view the driver is what Erik is trying to do. If he's correct, RI College gets lots of publicity and increases it's brand as a potential center of innovation in Print. There is a pretty good chance that someone at RI College sees the value of increasing the perception of their brand. And without ANY money invested in "advertising/marketing." Brand goes up, enrollment goes up. Enrollment goes up, everybody is happy.


Good points. But, given the capabilites of distance learning, communicating through the internet, my skill set and some contacts I have in RI, I think this could be solved relatively easily. If and only if there is someone at the school who buys in. If that is possible, everything else is doable. If that doesn't happen. Nothing can happen.



Ah! The wonders of the internet and a special thanks to Print Planet. Ain't life grand?

Good stuff, now all you gotta do is get with Erik and make it happen. Good luck!

[Erik Nikkanen]

[QUOTE=Michael Josefowicz;98629]Yes. From my point of view the driver is what Erik is trying to do. If he's correct, RI College gets lots of publicity and increases it's brand as a potential center of innovation in Print. There is a pretty good chance that someone at RI College sees the value of increasing the perception of their brand. And without ANY money invested in "advertising/marketing." Brand goes up, enrollment goes up. Enrollment goes up, everybody is happy.


Good points. But, given the capabilities of distance learning, communicating through the Internet, my skill set and some contacts I have in RI, I think this could be solved relatively easily. If and only if there is someone at the school who buys in. If that is possible, everything else is doable. If that doesn't happen. Nothing can happen.
[QUOTE]

Michael and Mattf,

The idea is not so bad but there are problems. One is that I work full time at a food packaging company doing process engineering and am not available to travel.

I have tried doing "distance development" before and it has not worked out so well. Once with a school on the west coast. There was some interest but after about 7 months, they realized that they did not have the skills to do the work. Another time was with a printer in Australia. Again months wasted and basically due to the lack of the specific skills required to fabricate parts etc.

The only time it worked was with a press manufacturer in Europe where the design engineers there could design and fabricate a simple version of the ITB, which we tested when I went there to give a seminar. But of course, they would not make the results public.

The ITB is potentially a product but it is also a very low cost way of demonstrating the science which would be useful to a school that was interested. To demonstrate the science, the ITB can be made much simpler than required for a production version.

Not only would it demonstrate the breaking of the interrelationship of ink and water, it can also be used to test other interesting issues on press from presetting to different methods of applying dampening solution to the press that potentially is less troublesome, maybe alcohol free solutions. I had a list of experiments that the school could have done for this purpose.

The real problem, as has been mentioned, with any long distance effort is who is at the other end. My view is that it needs to be an engineer who can design details for the target press. Otherwise it is not very practical. That is why I am looking for a printer locally. It would be much easier for me to work with the printer locally and do the design work.

But if someone in RI is interested and has an engineer who is keen on helping, I would not rule it out.

The best solution would be a Toronto based small printer. Unfortunately, there is not much curiousity in the Toronto printing community so far.

[mattf]

[QUOTE=Erik Nikkanen;98666][QUOTE=Michael Josefowicz;98629]Yes. From my point of view the driver is what Erik is trying to do. If he's correct, RI College gets lots of publicity and increases it's brand as a potential center of innovation in Print. There is a pretty good chance that someone at RI College sees the value of increasing the perception of their brand. And without ANY money invested in "advertising/marketing." Brand goes up, enrollment goes up. Enrollment goes up, everybody is happy.


Good points. But, given the capabilities of distance learning, communicating through the Internet, my skill set and some contacts I have in RI, I think this could be solved relatively easily. If and only if there is someone at the school who buys in. If that is possible, everything else is doable. If that doesn't happen. Nothing can happen.

Michael and Mattf,

The idea is not so bad but there are problems. One is that I work full time at a food packaging company doing process engineering and am not available to travel.

I have tried doing "distance development" before and it has not worked out so well. Once with a school on the west coast. There was some interest but after about 7 months, they realized that they did not have the skills to do the work. Another time was with a printer in Australia. Again months wasted and basically due to the lack of the specific skills required to fabricate parts etc.

The only time it worked was with a press manufacturer in Europe where the design engineers there could design and fabricate a simple version of the ITB, which we tested when I went there to give a seminar. But of course, they would not make the results public.

The ITB is potentially a product but it is also a very low cost way of demonstrating the science which would be useful to a school that was interested. To demonstrate the science, the ITB can be made much simpler than required for a production version.

Not only would it demonstrate the breaking of the interrelationship of ink and water, it can also be used to test other interesting issues on press from presetting to different methods of applying dampening solution to the press that potentially is less troublesome, maybe alcohol free solutions. I had a list of experiments that the school could have done for this purpose.

The real problem, as has been mentioned, with any long distance effort is who is at the other end. My view is that it needs to be an engineer who can design details for the target press. Otherwise it is not very practical. That is why I am looking for a printer locally. It would be much easier for me to work with the printer locally and do the design work.

But if someone in RI is interested and has an engineer who is keen on helping, I would not rule it out.

The best solution would be a Toronto based small printer. Unfortunately, there is not much curiousity in the Toronto printing community so far.

[QUOTE=Erik Nikkanen;98666][QUOTE=Michael Josefowicz;98629]Yes. From my point of view the driver is what Erik is trying to do. If he's correct, RI College gets lots of publicity and increases it's brand as a potential center of innovation in Print. There is a pretty good chance that someone at RI College sees the value of increasing the perception of their brand. And without ANY money invested in "advertising/marketing." Brand goes up, enrollment goes up. Enrollment goes up, everybody is happy.


Good points. But, given the capabilities of distance learning, communicating through the Internet, my skill set and some contacts I have in RI, I think this could be solved relatively easily. If and only if there is someone at the school who buys in. If that is possible, everything else is doable. If that doesn't happen. Nothing can happen.

Michael and Mattf,

The idea is not so bad but there are problems. One is that I work full time at a food packaging company doing process engineering and am not available to travel.

I have tried doing "distance development" before and it has not worked out so well. Once with a school on the west coast. There was some interest but after about 7 months, they realized that they did not have the skills to do the work. Another time was with a printer in Australia. Again months wasted and basically due to the lack of the specific skills required to fabricate parts etc.

The only time it worked was with a press manufacturer in Europe where the design engineers there could design and fabricate a simple version of the ITB, which we tested when I went there to give a seminar. But of course, they would not make the results public.

The ITB is potentially a product but it is also a very low cost way of demonstrating the science which would be useful to a school that was interested. To demonstrate the science, the ITB can be made much simpler than required for a production version.

Not only would it demonstrate the breaking of the interrelationship of ink and water, it can also be used to test other interesting issues on press from presetting to different methods of applying dampening solution to the press that potentially is less troublesome, maybe alcohol free solutions. I had a list of experiments that the school could have done for this purpose.

The real problem, as has been mentioned, with any long distance effort is who is at the other end. My view is that it needs to be an engineer who can design details for the target press. Otherwise it is not very practical. That is why I am looking for a printer locally. It would be much easier for me to work with the printer locally and do the design work.

But if someone in RI is interested and has an engineer who is keen on helping, I would not rule it out.

The best solution would be a Toronto based small printer. Unfortunately, there is not much curiousity in the Toronto printing community so far.

Erik:

Thanks for the info, there are no engineers at my company who would be able to design the machine for the target press. We don't have any engineers for starters, thats why I think Michael thought a good solution would be to get RI college involved, as they would potentially be able to design work to test the press. However, there is no specific engineering major at the college, so our best bet would be to find a school with a engineering background that could handle this sort of work. A school comes to mind...

MIT! Right in Boston, their engineering program is renowned across the country. Not sure if its something you were looking for, but it could be an interesting idea. Have MIT design and build the machine, take it to maybe RI college so they can test it. Any issues MIT students can easily head down to do what they need.

It would be nice to have MIT test it, but there isn't any specific print or media programs there. Just a suggestion if you feel this will work.

[Michael Josefowicz]

Erik-
Could you specify the skill sets that an onsite engineer would need? If I know what we're looking for , you never know....

[Erik Nikkanen]

Erik-
Could you specify the skill sets that an onsite engineer would need? If I know what we're looking for , you never know....

quote=It would be nice to have MIT test it, but there isn't any specific print or media programs there. Just a suggestion if you feel this will work. quote.

Michael and Mattf,

MIT would be a bit too much although it does sound great. MIT, an engineer's dream.

Back to reality. An engineer would be ideal but a cleaver mechanic would also work. It needs someone who can detail simple concepts and make parts, cut metal, drill holes, etc. Some people have no idea how to do this and it would not be fair to ask them to. At least it needs someone who is mechanically inclined and can fabricate parts.

Let's put this into perspective. This is not a complicated machine. The Ink Transfer Blade (ITB) is basically something like a scrapper blade and requires an extra pickup roller. The roller has to be mounted on the press and be in contact with the existing ductor roller. The ductor roller needs to be fixed in one position against the next roller in the roller train. The blade in the simplest form, which can be used for demonstrating the science, can be as simple as a nylon thin plate bolted to a support bar and which rests against the ink fountain roller. The blade assembly should have some arrangement to engage and disengage the blade, probably with small air cylinders. The details really depends on the specific press.

Just as a reminder, the ITB technology has a Canadian patent #2,288,354 and a US patent # 6,857,366. If you want to read up on the description there, that might help or it might make things more confusing.

If one thinks of the ITB as a simple scrapper blade that rests against the ink fountain roller and scraps all the ink metered by the ink key. The collected ink at the tip of the blade is then picked up by the pickup roller. This results in a positive feed of ink into the press that is not affected by water, temperature and press speed. The action of the ink metered by the ink key and positive transfer by the ITB results in a constant displacement pump. A very simple version of one.

When the press is feeding paper for printing, the ITB is engaged but when the paper is not fed, the ITB is disengaged so that it does not transfer ink. The other advantage is that the ITB results in a more continuous ink feed as opposed to the intermittent ink feed with the normal ductor action.

For production printing the blade has to be a little different but this simple explanation should give you the idea of the concept. Just thinking... ITB-MIT.... ohooo sounds so good but not really needed.

[Erik Nikkanen]

This would be for any small printer in the Toronto area.

An interesting experiment in Lean would be to do some testing of the Ink Transfer Blade (ITB) concept on a unit of one of your small presses.

The ITB eliminates the density variation of ink/water balance by decoupling the interaction of ink feed and water feed. Basically this means that even if one changes the water setting, the density will not change. Can not be washed out. The density will also not change if the press speed changes or the roller train temperature changes.

I'll build you a unit at my cost for you to test as long as you make the test results public. If there are any curious printers in Toronto, who are keen on seeing how the process can be changed, you can contact me at nikkanen@globalserve.net .

Erik

Just renewing my offer. I am still looking for an interested small printer in the Toronto area.

Any science minded printers out there that are curious in finding out how the process can be improved and maybe have the opportunity to change their process to be more consistent?

Erik

[Erik Nikkanen]

This would be for any small printer in the Toronto area.

An interesting experiment in Lean would be to do some testing of the Ink Transfer Blade (ITB) concept on a unit of one of your small presses.

The ITB eliminates the density variation of ink/water balance by decoupling the interaction of ink feed and water feed. Basically this means that even if one changes the water setting, the density will not change. Can not be washed out. The density will also not change if the press speed changes or the roller train temperature changes.

I'll build you a unit at my cost for you to test as long as you make the test results public. If there are any curious printers in Toronto, who are keen on seeing how the process can be changed, you can contact me at nikkanen@globalserve.net .

Erik

Just renewing my offer again.

I am still looking for an interested small printer in the Toronto area.

Any science minded printers out there that are curious in finding out how the process can be improved and maybe have the opportunity to change their process to be more consistent?

Erik
nikkanen@globalserve.net

[Erik Nikkanen]

This would be for any small printer in the Toronto area.

An interesting experiment in Lean would be to do some testing of the Ink Transfer Blade (ITB) concept on a unit of one of your small presses.

The ITB eliminates the density variation of ink/water balance by decoupling the interaction of ink feed and water feed. Basically this means that even if one changes the water setting, the density will not change. Can not be washed out. The density will also not change if the press speed changes or the roller train temperature changes.

I'll build you a unit at my cost for you to test as long as you make the test results public. If there are any curious printers in Toronto, who are keen on seeing how the process can be changed, you can contact me at nikkanen@globalserve.net .

Erik

Just renewing my offer again.

I am still looking for an interested small printer in the Toronto area.

Any science minded printers out there that are curious in finding out how the process can be improved and maybe have the opportunity to change their process to be more consistent?

Erik
nikkanen@globalserve.net

[Erik Nikkanen]

This would be for any small printer in the Toronto area.

An interesting experiment in Lean would be to do some testing of the Ink Transfer Blade (ITB) concept on a unit of one of your small presses.

The ITB eliminates the density variation of ink/water balance by decoupling the interaction of ink feed and water feed. Basically this means that even if one changes the water setting, the density will not change. Can not be washed out. The density will also not change if the press speed changes or the roller train temperature changes.

I'll build you a unit at my cost for you to test as long as you make the test results public. If there are any curious printers in Toronto, who are keen on seeing how the process can be changed, you can contact me at nikkanen@globalserve.net .

Erik

Just renewing my offer again.

I am still looking for an interested small printer in the Toronto area.

Any science minded printers out there that are curious in finding out how the process can be improved and maybe have the opportunity to change their process to be more consistent?

With the economy the way it is, this might be somthing that helps.

Erik
nikkanen@globalserve.net