I'm the designer/pre-press/all around guy in a small printshop. We have a Xante Platemaker 4 (yeah, I know) with Myriad 2 polyester plates and a Hamada 660CD printing press, 2 colors but 1 blanket.
Lately we've noticed a problem occuring on our jobs; the small gaps between close printed parts (i.e. text) tend to "block" out (see attachment). The plates become somewhat dirty at these spots, thus transfer this junk on the blanket. Sometimes after only a few copies, sometimes they can last the whole job.
The pressman ran his tests (pressure, Kompac unit, rolls, etc) and he's pretty sure it comes from the plates. This problem doesn't occur with metal plates by the way. No change in ink brand recently.
Some useful details:
No settings on the Platemaker 4 were altered in the close past, anyways I rechecked and they are within specs, values are the same I wrote down back then in case of loss of data.
We tried plates from a box of another supplier, since it began shortly after we opened a new box.
I tried various EP1 settings, from 13 to 20 (recommended for our plates is 17).
I tried fuser settings from 9 to 15 (increment of 2).
The toner cartridge was changed a few months ago.
Anybody has an idea of the problem, or how to troubleshoot it? Platemaker, print settings, plates, of press?
Thanks all!
JC
Edited by: Jeece on Nov 23, 2007 3:34 PM
Lately we've noticed a problem occuring on our jobs; the small gaps between close printed parts (i.e. text) tend to "block" out (see attachment). The plates become somewhat dirty at these spots, thus transfer this junk on the blanket. Sometimes after only a few copies, sometimes they can last the whole job.
The pressman ran his tests (pressure, Kompac unit, rolls, etc) and he's pretty sure it comes from the plates. This problem doesn't occur with metal plates by the way. No change in ink brand recently.
Some useful details:
No settings on the Platemaker 4 were altered in the close past, anyways I rechecked and they are within specs, values are the same I wrote down back then in case of loss of data.
We tried plates from a box of another supplier, since it began shortly after we opened a new box.
I tried various EP1 settings, from 13 to 20 (recommended for our plates is 17).
I tried fuser settings from 9 to 15 (increment of 2).
The toner cartridge was changed a few months ago.
Anybody has an idea of the problem, or how to troubleshoot it? Platemaker, print settings, plates, of press?
Thanks all!
JC
Edited by: Jeece on Nov 23, 2007 3:34 PM
