3 and 4 part printing industry standards

[559dwayne]

Good afternoon all,

I am looking for some industry standards in terms of alignment from one sheet to the next on a 3 part form. looking at jobs I have had produced I see the sheets behind the first sheet do not perfectly align. I understand the steps and processes to produce but I need to know, Is there an industry standard or tolerance that is acceptable to hold the printer to? Any info would help.

Thanks

 

[jotterpinky]

The press should be laying these down the ink on these sheets within several thousandths of an inch from sheet to sheet if they are being printed on a sheetfed press. As far as industry tolerances though on a job like this it should be reasonably accurate, at least accurate enough that it's not noticeable to the end user. If you're finding that your forms are out of register I would make the printer re-print these. They may be printing them on digital equipment as well which depending on run size etc. you might be getting them for much less than it would cost to print on an offset press in which case you'll get a fair bit more sheet to sheet differences. However any print shop worth it's salt should be able to register these so they're usable unless you have something on your form that requires the person to write on the sheet near perfectly as well. I would venture to say that if I was printing these via a digital printer I would expect no more difference than 1mm and that would be the high end.

 

[onwsk8r]

If it's bad enough that you have to register on a forum and ask about it, it's probably too bad. There aren't really standards per se for this type of thing, though.

Have you talked with you printer? It's possible someone was just being lazy, having an off-day, in a hurry, etc. All the shops I've worked at will gladly fix a mistake like this at no cost to you and with a prodigiously quick turnaround.

A good rule of thumb, as the previous poster mentioned, is that the sheet-to-sheet registration - the difference in image placement between sheets of a print run - should not be more than 1mm.