Recent content by Dan Roll

The LithKemKo company might have been the last company selling deep etch plate chemistry , but when I joined Anchor/LithKemKo in 1985 there was no one there that remembered making any.

The simple way to check if the dampening compensating system is working properly is to, once an approved result is obtained, vary the press speed up and down. If set correctly, the speed of the press will have little, to no, effect on the work. Press manufacturers are not very reliable sources...

it seems the level of awareness about how the housing bubble in the US was created is pretty low. Bill Clinton and his Housing and Urban Development secretary Andrew Cuomo coerced (to put it mildly, banks were threatened with prosecution if they refused to loan money to people previously...

I even remember when conventional dampening was conventional!

it is common for people to confuse pH with strength, the best analogy I know of is to think of fountain solution pH as voltage. Knowing the voltage of a charge gives you some information about it, but not any clue to how much electricity there is. The same holds true for pH in fountain...

When I got started in the fountain solution business back in '85 almost everyone was willing to try even the most experimental attempts at fountain solution formulations because no one was all that happy with what they were running. Rossos and alcohol was about the only thing sold in the states...

If the solids look 'snowflaked" or 'emulsified' or "orange-peel" I would consider this to be a problem caused by something other than calcium. Perhaps it would be useful to experiment next time you see this by adding a little oil (linseed or tung) to the ink in the rollers in line with the...

Evil calcium is the worst kind! Be careful with calcium removers, they are pretty strong and can damage your rollers if you are not careful. I am curious though, calcium problems usually involve stripping in the ink rollers and your original complaint doesn't mention stripping. Calcium ions...

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to tread on anyones feelings, I'll try to be more sensitive in the future. My lovely wife will agree with you, I am a jerk sometimes. I will admit to a level of frustration at the widespread use of refractometers in the FS and silicone business and while the use...

Uhhh, refractometry is of dubious value for measuring fountain solution. Reading the Brix value of a solution is good if you are measuring sugar, alcohol, or carbohydrate content (wine making is where this technology came from) but fountain solutions contain combinations of ingredients (gums...

The thought of running a 15% thinner ink film does not appeal to me.

CPT, I'm amazed someone had an internet based pdf that Alois had not already offered up!

It sounds to me like what is referred to as 'carboning' is what we used to call 'chaulking' defined as when ink behaves as if dry for the pressman (jobs do not block in the delivery and can be backed-up) but mark or smear in the bindery. This was caused by pigment migrating to the surface of...

Any theoretical discussion of litho technology (especially fountain solution and alcohol) always causes people on this forum to start expressing their opinions and observations and I think this is the best thing that happens here. I have been formulating and selling alcohol replacement fountain...

'Where does the water go?' was a big topic of debate back in the early nineteen-ninties with a lot of competing research done by such luminaries as McPhee and Fadner. Much of the theory presented at the time seemed contradictory, at odds with things I had observed in the pressroom. These...