Presstek 34DI problems

[ian]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

I feel your pain.. we have a Kodak DI 5334. It took us almost a year to figure out how to run this press "Without presstek's Help"
Room Temperature - 75-80 F (your press room is currently too cold the ink wont laydown)
Inks - Toyo
Yellow - Medium Tak
Cyan, Magenta and Black are low tak
Blankets are sold by Molnar (phenox ) custom size.. we made them the size of the blanket cylinder - Long Grain
Packing is .25" shorter than the new blanket on both sides, and .25" bigger in length then presstek recommended
Form Roller 4 strip is set to 4-5mm.. to pickup excess ink off the blanket
Chiller roller temperature is 21C
tighten your blankets every day..
We have tried all different inks and supplies and this seems to be the best fit. Presstek service reps said everything we are doing is not to spec.
On long run lengths do no use the auto blanket wash, wipe by hand

Try these settings and let me know how it works. 80% of your problems with go away.. the balance 20% you will have to live with
If you need more help.. feel free to email me [email protected]

 

[ian]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

Does anyone here actually use the Vim plates on the Kodak/Presstek DI?? any success.. do you need to recalibrate all your ink dot gains?
I have been told these plates work great on the Heidi

 

[Disappointed]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

Hi all, new to here, i wish i had found this place before we bought a 34di!

We had it installed in january '07. We demo'd the presstek and the screen truepress, took three sample jobs, the screen failed miserably on two of them, the presstek did not, hence the order for the presstek.

We had a room built specially for it, a/c unit as well. Setup took a week longer than expected due to a hidden setting having been left on factory test mode in japan. Our colour control requirements go far beyond usual print specs as we print and maintain a library of over 300 different colour prints for sale, so consistency was imperative. They set the press up as the usually do on a comercial A profile which had little relevance to us as we used ISO / Fogra profiles. This took them a while to fathom out and they never really got the gist of the method. After our training period we took over and got ok results on Van Son inks and our usual paper.

Most of our work is short-ish run (around 2000) apart from a quarterly magazine of 15000 copies / 48 pages. This was where it started to fall apart. We had tinting and toning, ink drying on rollers, paper piling on blankets and so on. After about 4 months of engineer visits, we changed paper and inks to Sun Chemicals and had to recalibrate the press fully. They blamed the ink and the paper and the room temperature, it was set at 21C but would climb to 28C. The colour would progressively darken as the temperature rose. The chiller was set at 23C. Any lower and the black ink would not flow out on the paper and looked bad.

After more engineers, we installed another a/c unit which nailed the temp to 21C, this helped the problem to a point where it worked ok.

So we now have a machine that will only work at ONE temperature, on ONE set of ink and only ONE brand of paper!!!!

We are not impressed yet. It now costs a fortune to keep the heat right, we have had to switch papers and its still not right.

It will churn out reasonable quality short run stuff all day, but we need extreme quality output. It looks like it may be able to do it but the price in achieving this is extremely high in down time as well as financially.

This is an extremely short version of a 9 month saga of troubles, we have been in print for 25 years and have never regretted anything as much as this!

 

[Disappointed]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

Me again,

We have also got issues with the blanket washes, at one stage, an engineer told us we might have to hand wash the blankets by hand every 1000 sheets! Stuff that! Several engineer visits later and we now wash after every stack on a long run, still more than on our old press as the stacks are much smaller. There is a striping build up on the black & magenta blankets.

The best blankets we have found are supplied by Ultrachem, i think they are Eurodot blue ones, the Ryobi ones were crap. Roller chiller temp is now same as room temp at 22C, this gets rid of the monday morning troubles caused by the 1C difference in roller to room temps, it's THAT sensitive!

The colours still vary as the machine warms up, but not as much as to stop us printing. 9 months into ownership and we are just starting to print reliable results. I feel this press needs serious R&D work in the heat control and blanket wash areas. And YES the rollers do need setting every couple of weeks! We had a bearing wear out in the cyan ink vibrator roller mech. they replaced it and the new one wore out within two weeks! The existing one is holding out ok though.

It seems to promise so much but always lets itself down, so annoying.

 

[banjoman]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

Just a thought, I serviced a lot of machines in the past and the Ryobi 3302 had the tone bar problems sometimes and in most cases it was the Form Rollers moving side to side with the oscillator, just a tiny bit of side to side movement will cause those bars. Soon as I would see the sheet and the tone bars in the copy I would turn the press on and look at the Forms to see if they were moving, easy to fix if that is the problem.

banjoman

 

[ian]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems-VIM Plates

Re: Presstek 34DI problems-VIM Plates

Responding back to my own post, tried the VIM plates today.. man what a difference
First job ran over 10K impressions, no wear on plates, going to complete a job tomorrow from today and see if we can hit 16000 impressions on 10pt
Also didn't notice any toning on the edge of the plate like we got on the presstek plates.
Previously we only managed to get 8-9K from a set of plates on the first side and new black plate every 3-4K when backing it up, this has been a big achievement for us so far.

 

[ian]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

Go back to Toyo.. we tried 7 different ink suppliers and we found Toyo to be the most stable ink, We've done jobs upto 100K impressions with multiburns every 8K and been able to hold colour.
We have a aircon in the warehouse plus 3 more in the small di room
I am surprised you need to be at 21C constant to be able to print - our latitude is 73-80F.
Dumb question to everyone on this - is the chiller in the same room as the press or outside?. Our chiller is on the roof above the press
We can run almost any paper now.. good stuff and cheap crap - Ran magnet sheets this week.. was bit of a challenge to feed.

Here is another secret that Prestek wont tell you
When ductor moves from one side to the other when it hits the rollers.. hence if you have the problem where ink is heavy on the edges and your keys are set to zero you have a problem. There is a fix for it, you will have to fight with them to install the fix. The fix will drop the ductor from the middle to eliminate that problem

 

[ian]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

I was told by presstek to oscillate the form rollers a bit to reduce ghosting.. most presses are setup this way...

 

[ian]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems-Powder

Re: Presstek 34DI problems-Powder

Need help on the spray powder. Currently use Varn C350 (35 micron). Works great with most jobs.. have problems with jobs that need to be UV coated or Laminated. I have tried Varn C270 and we get offsetting.. any suggestions.
Majority of our work is board, 10-12-14-pt

 

[Disappointed]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

We found the Toyo inks would not give us a colour match. We have settled on Sun Chemical IroDry now although the Cyan seems to be very dense in pigment.

Our chiller unit is where it was installed, in the same room. But now that we have the room temp down, it gives off far less heat as it is working less.

It needs a bit more R&D work, but thats the problem these days, they get the customer to detect and fix the problems that should have been fixed at design time.

 

[DI Specialist]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

I Have been looking at your issues with the 34DI and am very supperised, i am currently in contact with some 70 presstek DI users and the issues you seem to have appear to be unfortuantly linked to your press, This could be for a numbers of reasons.

Your tonning issues sound to me more like an ink issue the main brands that work very well with a wide temprature band are Sun Chemicials IRO DRY, Van-Son SonaDry, and Toyo LZ and MZ. LZ is low tack for cooler enviroments and MZ is medium tack for the warmer enviroment. Your Chiller unit needs to be set so the ink temprature is around 19-22OC and your imaging set to 26 if you set the ink temprature within 1 degree of the imaging, the unit can not set itself as it works on a borrowing system,

Run length on plates is not a usal issue if you are not getting the garenteed 20000 off a plate its usually the type of blanket being used if it is quite a soft blanket as no water is used the paper dust builds up and acts as an abrasive surface and wears the silicone surface on the plate this also appaers as a tonning on the printed sheet.
All in all the 34DI press is a very well built solid and reliable machine that has extreamley high quality print at 300lpi and being chemistry free is a great benifit to us all

 

[Disappointed]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

Our 34Di will not run at anything less than 22C on the rollers, any lower and the black ink will not flow correctly. Van son inks will no longer run at all due to continuous scumming and toning at any temperature. We only use Sun chemicals ink now.

Plate run length is not really a problem as we usually hit another snag long before the plate wears out and have to stop the run anyway. It really struggles on runs above 3-4000.

The form rollers are shot after only 9 months, i understand this is a known chemical issue and they are being replaced FOC. When we eventually get them that is.

 

[Disappointed]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

I would like to add that the 34Di is definitely NOT a colour copier, there are no similarities. For short run work, this press will spit out good quality day in day out all day long once it is setup properly. We are struggling due to our stringent colour control requirements and the need for consistency.

The screen truepress failed our tests so badly that we are very pleased we did not get one of them. I feel that waterless print is definately the way forward, its just in its infancy though.

I am confident we will get there in the end.

 

[[email protected]]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

I am sorry to hear you are the only person having problems with your waterless copier. I mean 70 DI users as Blakemore has stated he is in contact with are happy and not having issues at all. What are you doing wrong? Did you supply the special operating environment for this machine? If you give these guys one reason to say it is your fault they will. Low power output, the room is to hot, the ink is not right; the gravity on that side of the room is wrong etc.
As far as a DI Copier being chemistry free I thought Ink, solevents and cleaning supplies were all developed by Chemists. I wonder what they use to produce the plates for that machine without chemicals.
Blakemore maybe read this [http://www.mass.gov/dep/public/press/0507press.htm]
Any way best of luck with your waterless copier.

 

[Ryobi Man]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

Wally ,
Do you know Big Dave Sartane ?

 

[GT Print]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

Hello Gentlemen, I am new to this discussion. We are looking at a Presstek 52DI. I have read all through this discussion, but the 52DI seems to be a newer machine. Are there any other landscape DI's out there. I looked at the Screen site and their machine is portrait. My concern with Portrait is tail whip and side to side registration. That is what i was told about the 3304HA anyways. We are looking at this for short run publication printing.

 

[[email protected]]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

GT,
Even a press with a pull guide can tail whip or have register issues. IMHO the 14x20 sheet size is more for ink coverage than register. The 52 uses a stream feeder also.That is why only Ptek can sell it and not xpedx. Just like the ABD 4995 had a stream feeder and the 3304H has a push guide.
That push guide with good paper and properly set up by both tech and pressman is extremely accurate within a few thousands. It will maintain a very accurate cut line.

The present trend now a days is to push customers into a DI but they present thier own set of problems. While your sheet to sheet register may be good maybe your unit to unit register is off due to smashed packing or fan out etc. Any press will offer a different challenge. Sales weasels talk a good talk that is why I would do my home work.

I have a customer that does pubs all the time on a 3304HA and a DPM that are really good looking and very profitable.

Best of luck
OG

 

[Ryobi Man]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

The 52DI uses the same stream feeder as the Conventional Landscape Presses built by Ryobi the suction bed and side lay will give Dot for Dot register unlike a Push Lay as used on the 3302 and 3304 which is OK for line work . The 34DI Uses the Push Lay which is fine for the initial First Pass IF SET UP ACCURATELY likewise the two previous .The 52DI Has been brought onto the market aiming at the Commercial Printer to run alongside the bigger size presses which will do the large runs .The only other Landscape Press that I know of is the KBA 74 KARAT.
Good Luck with the Research
Regards RM
P.S I'm NOT A SALESMAN!!!!!!!!!

 

[Disappointed]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

Hi

if you follow back in this and other threads, you will see that we had a nightmare ride with a 34Di. We have upgraded to the 52Di and it is in a different league.

It still needs a monitored environment but only a week after install and we are running 8000/hour for 8 hours a day on a large job. The register is **brilliant** no whip or bounce, the feeder is a dream. If it was fully run-in, i would be running 9500/hour, but we are taking it easy.

Still suffering from black picking but we can now with different inks etc so we should get that sorted soon.

The best bit of advice i can give is **Put the roller chiller unit out of the press room*** this is a must as it belts out a LOT of heat.

Dave

 

[rbailleu]

Re: Presstek 34DI problems

I thought the 52di topped out at 7500iph. doesn't the sheet have to go around twice to pick up all 4 colors. any way we had a old qmdi. the pressman loved it. he got to sit a wait for 15 minutes while the press imaged. we traded up to a sm52-4. it takes about 15 minutes for full setup. but it will run at 15000iph. we have not run it faster than 12,000 though.