Hybrid Screening

[prepressdork]

Just curious if anyone out there is using hybrid screening on any kind of basis? Is there still demand for this type of screening (or even full stochastic) in the marketplace?

Thanks,
pd

 

[gordo]

Just curious if anyone out there is using hybrid screening on any kind of basis? Is there still demand for this type of screening (or even full stochastic) in the marketplace?

Thanks,
pd

Hybrid AM screening is primarily used in flexo printing. There's a lot of misinformation about what it is and its application propagated by vendor marketing folks. This link will give you the correct info:
The Print Guide: Hybrid AM Screening/XM Screening

Printers don't tend to demand - that would be proactive and they tend to be reactive (sarcasm). Interestingly I just finished helping a daily newspaper convert to FM screening (Auraia DM) primarily for its lithographic benefits.

Gordo

 

[Green Printer]

Hi Gordo

Andy's Auraia Dm screening is very good.

 

[Ozkan Hangisi]

Hybrid screening is suitable when high resolution is needed with negative plates, especially photopolymer type.

 

[BeauchampT]

I've never printed with DM but love the results. Gordo - you mention lithographic benefits: care to expound???

 

[gordo]

I've never printed with DM but love the results. Gordo - you mention lithographic benefits: care to expound???

The litho benefits seen (on a newspaper press) are:
Less ink used (cost reduction) around 10% - 15% lower (this is over and above what their ink optimization is doing)
Reduced water which results in less bindery problems due to paper curl.
More consistent web growth which makes calculating distortion compensation more effective.
Reduced visibility of misregistrstion so less wastage.
Enhanced color stability on press.

Gordo

 

[BeauchampT]

Thanks Gordo...I've run FM and found the difference in register stability quite impressive.

I do have a question though - we noticed that surface to surface mismatches (print pages that have a common shared image but printed on different sides of the paper) were more prevalent with our FM screening. Is this something that is common with FM screening, or just us?

 

[jslabovitz]

Apologies if I hijack this thread a bit, but it's brought up a question I've been curious about.

Background -- I'm printing intaglio photogravures on photopolymer plates. Like most printmakers these days, I generate digital positive transparencies on an inkjet printer, using the built-in stochastic screening to reproduce tones. As is conventional, I pre-expose the plate with an 'aquatint screen' -- generally a sheet of film from an imagesetter with an ~80% FM screen.

I'm pondering acquiring an imagesetter to generate the digital positives instead of using inkjet; however, RIPs that support FM or hybrid screening are quite expensive. It seems that if a RIP is able to take a high resolution, 1-bit file, then it would be possible to generate the FM-screened image on another computer, and then send the resulting 1-bit file to the RIP to image.

Gordo -- you seem to know a lot about the availability of screening technologies. Do you know whether there's any standalone software to screen digital images (say, TIFF files) using some variety of FM/hybrid techniques, and end up with a file that is suitable to sending to a simple RIP? My preference would be open-source, but a commercial product would be good to know about.

--John

 

[gordo]

Try contacting Stephen Herron at Isis imaging regarding Icefields screening at this link:

Home

Gordo

 

[jslabovitz]

Great! Thanks, Gordo.