Help with a Production Problem

[Muddy]

We have a problem we need to solve right away.

We have printed a job that is for only about 1110 pieces. Its CMYK over black. We printed the CMYK offset because of the image difficulties and then varnished it for protection. Today I'm trying to print the variable on the back side and it's making a mess if the varnish on the front. I suspect the heat required to fuse the toner is melting the varnish on the back side and is ruining this piece.

In hindsight perhaps we should have approached this differently but right now I need to solve this. Any ideas would be helpful. If worse comes to worse there are seven different backs. I could make 7 plates, run them offset and number them analog. It gets the job out at deadline but is not ideal that's for sure.

Any speedy responses would be most helpful.

 

[lfelton]

have you got any way to reduce the fuser temperature? I know on some machines you can control it directly, on others you can lie to the machine and tell it you are running a lighter stock.

Of course, then you would need to make sure that the toner was fused OK and it might be more matte than you'd like.

 

[kslight]

Unless you have the option of inkjetting then I think your proposed option is probably the only way to get it out without a rerun. I guess I've never tried to run varnished prints back through our digital machines before... I know even non-varnished offset will sometimes have problems running through our black and white printers depending on stock, coverage, how long we gave it to dry, and whether or not the pressman used powder. If you have an alternate machine to put the black and white on with (like a digital color machine and just run in black mode) then you might try that, that has worked for us in the past...but again, no idea what will happen to the varnish.

How long did the offset have to sit before you started running it?
What kind of stock did you run it on, and what kind of black and white machine?

 

[Muddy]

Problem solved, sorta.

We're going to rerun the whole thing. Actually, that isn't exctly true. The guys trying to sell us the KM 6501 are going to test their machine for us by running this job. They know I'm reselling it so I don't feel too sleazy about it.

Thanks for your replies. I'm learning more and more every day about the digital print world in both it's good and bad forms.

 

[gg2017]

I ran a job like this a couple of months ago. It was metallic gold and silver and printed on press. We then had a flood varnish to seal it and a spot varnish over that for a "spotlight" effect. I had to variable imprint bout 1000 large numbers over the top of this. We got it to work well...it just took a LOT of drying time. I tried to imprint in 2 days after and it melted/streaked the varnish. After the weekend however...a little over 4 days drying time...it ran through great with no problems. This was on a Xerox Docucolor 5000. Just try to schedule enough drying time on front end.

 

[EASYdoor]

I ran a job like this a couple of months ago. It was metallic gold and silver and printed on press. We then had a flood varnish to seal it and a spot varnish over that for a "spotlight" effect. I had to variable imprint bout 1000 large numbers over the top of this. We got it to work well...it just took a LOT of drying time. I tried to imprint in 2 days after and it melted/streaked the varnish. After the weekend however...a little over 4 days drying time...it ran through great with no problems. This was on a Xerox Docucolor 5000. Just try to schedule enough drying time on front end.

Really? 4 days of drying time is enough. Can you tell us more about this subject, what kind of paper, what was the ink coverage on the offset/digital, any powder usage? under what settings did you print it on you're dc machine?