Creeping (Shingling) Saddle Stitch w/ Crossovers

[lesliegroenewald]

We have just completed a 48 page saddle stiched job that has a 3.5mm white border around every page.
The kreep was not enough and I am trying to find out what went wrong.
We printed it on 148gsm matt and it was overall matt Aquis varnished. We entered the paper thickness (0.1mm) in Signa that calculates and applies the kreep. Should we have included the thickness of the varnish and the ink, (most pages have 100% coverage) in the calculation? Is there some kind of a folmula that we can use to determine all these factors in order to give Signa a more accurate figure to work with.

[DCurry]

I don't know how Signa handles it, but in Preps you enter the total creep amount, not the paper thickness.

[jankorous]

We have just completed a 48 page saddle stiched job that has a 3.5mm white border around every page.
The kreep was not enough and I am trying to find out what went wrong.
We printed it on 148gsm matt and it was overall matt Aquis varnished. We entered the paper thickness (0.1mm) in Signa that calculates and applies the kreep. Should we have included the thickness of the varnish and the ink, (most pages have 100% coverage) in the calculation? Is there some kind of a folmula that we can use to determine all these factors in order to give Signa a more accurate figure to work with.

What kind of stitch machine do you use ?

[lesliegroenewald]

We use a Muller Martini Presto

[jankorous]

We use a Muller Martini Presto

It looks good, do you measure the paper yourself ?
Also, what is the difference in the white border ? how many mm first page compared to the middle ?

The best solution (I think ) is to take blank folded sheets and measure the difference between the fisrt page and the middle - this gives you value X . Than look into signa and measure the same with creeping you have set with measuring tool - this gives you value Y
then X/Y gives you paper thickness factor
This number you can insert in creeping options.

[lesliegroenewald]

Thanks for the advice - We did find the problem. If you use an existing template that has had kreep applied and you apply a new value Signa keeps the old value.

[Lukas Engqvist]

Glad you found the problem.
Even though the calculation is "linear" if you look carefully at a thick folded mag you'll notice that as the number of pages inceases they are curved at the spine complicating the equation. It is usually small enough to neglect.
But can't help but minirant about how designers are getting more demanding and less understanding that we have to adapt to reality instead of thinking that reality can bend to designers whims.

[lesliegroenewald]

Lucas, this is a piece I wrote a couple of years ago as an intro to a book someone wanted to write about his experiences in the printing trade . . . think yoy will enjoy it

What now?
The age old argument – if I keep to all the rules and regulations that you printers and repro houses prescribe, my designs will all be restricted and my creativity bottled, no freedom.
Well, how many times have you received a phone call from your printer or repro house to tell you that your design will not work, that they have to add 10mm to the left hand side of every page because the holes that has to be punched will go through the text? Let us turn this question around. How many times have you phoned your printer or repro house for advice before you start a design or get into some really complicated piece of printed matter that has to look like a ball but erect like a mega structure?
Let us start at the beginning. When the Monks chiseled a book out of a piece of rock and it took them 25 years to complete one page do you think they would have obliged if you asked them to change the type face? We are sure they made some mistakes along the road.
When Guttenberg rolled out the first book that was made up and printed using movable letters - how many people were as excited as he was? He must have made a mistake or two while producing this first ever publication.
When the first printers compiled printing material they must have been very pleased with their handy work. Did everything turn out hunky dory? We doubt it.
When the repro house or printer put a page together from a trace guide supplied – boy oh boy – at first proof stage the logo always had to move a quarter mil to the left and it had to be optically straightened. All the fullstops had to be outside the justification line on the right hand side. . .
The Monks, Guttenberg, the first printers and the repro houses all had something in common – they used dedicated equipment – tools designed to do the job at hand and nothing else. Imagine using the mono caster as a calculator or the step and repeat machine to do colour separations.
We are sure that all these guys who did the actual work planned it very carefully before they just let loose. They also followed a carefully prepared and preserved set of rules (Lets call them rules for now) passed down from master printer to journeyman to apprentice, generation after generation. For instance. How do you determine the best set width for a specific font and font size? What is the relation between the space inserted in the heads, tails, backs and gutters of a page? A passion for the trade. They were pregnant with new ideas, full of enthusiasm to experiment, perfect them and then to let the world share. They even had a measurement, Ems (12point or pica was the standard) used by most printers and Cicero used by the French, that were unique to the printing industry. Imagine your very own measurement system! The rest of the world measured in inches and later in millimeters.
With Desktop Publishing making an appearance in the early eighties the world of the dedicated journeyman and dedicated equipment came to a grounding halt. All of a sudden everything that was unique to the printing and related trades were available to the general public. This is still true today. What is not freely available to the so called general public is the experience that has been gained through the years. Those well guarded little secrets that make the job at hand so much more fun and allow it to run smoother so you can enjoy what you are doing and just keep on doing more and more!
Nothing is more frustrating than when you hold in your hand your well prepared masterpiece of a design, copy written by the best copy writer in town, carefully proof read, sighed off by the client, brilliantly printed in seven colours, exquisitely foiled, embossed on all 64 pages, section sewn, onionskin dividers, fold out pocket with gusset for 8 inserts on the inside back cover, neatly die-cut, overall gloss uv’ed and just the correct amount of spot matt uv to break the contrast around the logo and as you page, all 4 sections of the text fall out of the cover. You phone the printer and he says: ‘‘But you wanted the cover uv’ed on both sides’’ Then you say ‘‘But . . .’’ Nothing is sane anymore, you want to laugh or scream, maybe cry! As you start reading the text, with the phone still in you hand and the printer on the other side, you see that somehow the font you used has defaulted to capital fullstops all over the show and just to make your day, they are all upside down!!! What now ?
The objective of this publication is to freely distribute and communicate these everyday potholes and landmines that we all tend to sort of forget when the going gets tough, the deadline lurks, the client is going overseas and the planes on the airports are slipping because of all the wet ink jobs that was delivered. Info and tips gathered, tested and tried, not to constrain creativity but rather compliment it, walk side by side and learn from each other to benefit all. Designers do not just design and printers does not just print. Those days are gone forever. Together they create a masterpiece in communication.

[slehning]

We did try this, and maybe we are not doing this right, but we are putting in our shingling dimensions into the inner .135 to be exact, then selecting scale.

When we do this it appears that maybe only the left side pages are being effected, and some are going the opposite way. Do we put in a negative value?

Thanks in Advance for the Help

[slehning]

Do I plug in the regular shingling info in the inner creep box as normal?