Staccato 10 Micron

[erikson73]

Hi all, currently my company is facing some problem in printing Staccato 10 micron. Can anyone please advise me on the following issues base on your success in printing with it.

(1) Can someone please provied me the plate curve value for staccato 10 micron as compared to the 175 screenline for my test reference?

(2) What is the dot gain for staccato 10 micron as compared to the staccato 20 micron?

(3) Currently my company operate with 5 presses. Am I right to say that if we want to print Staccato 10 micron with all these 5 presses, I will need to fingerprint each of them and derive 5 sets of plate curve for each them?

(4) Assuming my presses condition (including blanket and ink) are stable, am I right to say that I will also need to derive different plate curves for different paper stock (e.g gloss, matt and uncoated)?

(5) My pressmen do not have any issue in matching our epson proof when printing with AM screen but they encounter great difficulties when printing with staccato 10 micron. What could be the possible reasons and how can we correct it......is it to do with our setting for the plate curve & gray balance?

WIll be looking forward to your contribution. Thanks in advance!

Edited by: Eric Boo on Jun 30, 2008 11:45 PM

 

[Ozzi Printer]

Re: Staccato 10 Micron

We run the odd job on 20 micron screen for coated and we use 25 micron for all uncoated, not sure why you would jump from 175lpi to 10 micron?

You will need to run a curve to counter the dot gain, you could start with a standard one on whatever system you use, we use "minus 15" on our Kodak Printergy for uncoated

Different paper will need a different curve, we have made a custom curve for each paper we use with our AM screening as we print within an ISO standard, we use a program call rapidcheck

 

[erikson73]

Re: Staccato 10 Micron

Thanks Ozzi Printer. Sorry that I did not highlight that we did run Staccato 20 micron before we move on to Staccato 10 micron. Apparently, we are not facing much difficulties with it.

Problems start to arise only for the 10 micron. According to our Pressman we are unable to get the right colour with minimum effort on press. Sometimes the adjustment on press can be quite drastic and eventually the Press Manager will need to stop the job and instruct the CTP guys to manually adjust the curve on the quarter tone, mid tone and 3/4 tone.....and re-output plates which I personally do not think it is the rightful way to do so, as he is changing the curve values base on his "experience or judgement" and not via a proper test.

Am I right to say that similar to the Staccato 20 micron, as long as we set the right values for the dot gain and gray balance, we should be able be able to match our target standard as easily?

Also, with regards to your comment:

"Different paper will need a different curve, we have made a custom curve for each paper we use with our AM screening as we print within an ISO standard, we use a program call rapidcheck "

Are we categorizing the paper into only coated and uncoated? Or does the grammage of the paper matters too? Or what do you mean by "different paper"?

Do we need to run the test form on our presses to determine their tonal reponse and create a customize curve for each of them if we want all our 5 presses to be able to run Staccato?

Will be looking forward to all valuable reply. Thanks!

 

[Ozzi Printer]

Re: Staccato 10 Micron

I would recommend you discuss the issues with your pre-press vendor and machinery supplier

To print 10 micron is very demanding, your press, blankets, rollers and setting must be in very good condition, you should also use good quality paper with a smooth surface

Is you platesetter and plates capable of providing consistent 10 micron screen, and do you measure that?

Even you choice of ink is important (some inks are better for fine screen rulings)

If you which to print to a standard, say ISO 39L, across a number of screen rulings be it AM or FM, you will need to create curves for presses and stocks, you can buy software and hardware to manage this.

I would take a step back and ask why you need to do it (extra work and costs) and whether it will improve the profitability of your business.

 

[gordo]

Re: Staccato 10 Micron

Hi Eric,

1) You should create custom plate curves to align the tone response of Staccato 10 to your current 175 lpi AM
2) Typically plate curves that work for Staccato 20 can be used for 10
3) You may be able to use a single averaged curve. It depends on your press condition
4) Most quality printers will have different plate curves for different substrates - this applies to AM and FM work
5) If your plate curves are inappropriate you will have troubles. With proper plate curves you will likely only see a difference in one or two color screen tint builds. Staccato will appear slightly more vibrant (more chroma). You may want to reprofile so that your proof more accurately represents this difference. Most printers do not. It's very unlikely that you'll see any difference in contone/raster images.

You can use Staccato 20 or 10 on nearly all papers that you can run 175 lpi. You do not have to go to a coarser screen just because the paper is uncoated.
If your pres folks want to make plate curve changes on the fly, there may be a problem with your plate curves - even the 20 micron. The finer the screen the less it reacts to SID moves. 10 is more stable than 20. They may have been using the extra "slop" in 20 micron to move their SIDs to get a "match" and therefore compensating for poor quality plate curves.

Most shops that run Staccato 10 do so for just a percentage of their presswork. There are only a few shops (about two dozen) that run Staccato 10 for 100% of their work.

I see that you are in Singapore. I will be there in September with a commercial printer that does Staccato 10 for 100% of his jobs. Perhaps we can meet. Contact me off line to arrange. gordon(dot)pritchard(at)kodak.com

best, gordo

 

[apurva]

Re: Staccato 10 Micron

Hi Eric,

I am from India. We have one press one CTP... much easier to manage than 5 presses, right? ;-)

We are regularly doing 10 micron Staccato on various substrates. I will be happy to share my experience with you if it helps.

>> (1) Can someone please provide me the plate curve value for staccato 10 micron as compared to the 175 screenline for my test reference?

It totally depends on the plates, platesetter and processor configuration. We are using Kodak Sword Ultra (not officially accredited for 10 micron) but I will tell you what are the differences that I find compared to #175. The 50 remains in the range 49 to 50 in AM and 47.5 to 49 in FM10. 25 in 23-24 in AM but 21-23 in FM. Similarly I find about 1 % dip at 75 also.

Since we have only one press, we have not created a separate plate curve for FM and take care of this using TRC (dot gain curve).
If you want I can send you exact readings found on my plates, but I doubt if they will be useful to you.

>> (2) What is the dot gain for staccato 10 micron as compared to the staccato 20 micron?

This again depends on lot of things: first and foremost on printing inks. Anyway, from my experience, I can say that there is not much of a difference between 20 and 10.

Here are the readings for 210 GSM Matt coated paper, Cyan ink, file values: 5, 15, 25, 50, 75, 95:
Stac. 10: 13, 36, 54, 82, 95, 99
Stac. 20: 11, 34, 52, 83, 95, 98
#200: 11, 27, 41, 69, 87, 98

What we do is as follows: We print a calibration strip on side / extra space in every possible job that we print. (Swatches 0, 5, 15, 25, 50, 75, 95,100 in all colors) and measure them periodical. I use this data to check my existing TRC and use it to fine tune it if needed. I find that this method of measuring TRC is better than fingerprinting the press because it gives me "running press condition" results rather than "ideal test conditions". It also helps me understand or estimate dot gain of a different substrate. Suppose I have to print on a different substrate tomorrow, I will request the press to run a few sheets of that substrate in some job today which contains calibration strip. This may not be very accurate but will give some guidelines and is a better option than just shooting from the hips.

If you want I will be happy to share my readings, again as I said, your case will be different than mine.

>> (3) Currently my company operate with 5 presses. Am I right to say that if we want to print Staccato 10 micron with all these 5 presses,
>> I will need to fingerprint each of them and derive 5 sets of plate curve for each them?

I think, yes. But I suggest you try my method of printing test strip in a routine print job and take a look. It will help you understand the situation better.

>> (4) Assuming my presses condition (including blanket and ink) are stable, am I right to say that I will also need to derive different plate
>> curves for different paper stock (e.g gloss, matt and uncoated)?

Without any doubt YES. It varies a lot especially in 10%-30% and 60%-80%. Your midtones may be acceptable but shadows and highlights can go off considerably.

>> (5) My pressmen do not have any issue in matching our epson proof when printing with AM screen but they encounter great difficulties when
>> printing with staccato 10 micron. What could be the possible reasons and how can we correct it......is it to do with our setting for the plate
>> curve & gray balance?

I think, using correct curves (TRC) will solve this problem. I have created one small test target that contains a flesh-tone, a few four color swatches that are vertically cut into pieces and each strip is printed in different screen. If my curves are perfect, the picture should look even - all screens showing same color and if it is off, it immediately tells me which curve is wrong. I print it periodically with a normal print job if there is some space in paper, It helps a lot.

I hope, I have not confused you and given you some information that you can use...

Regards,
Apurva Ashar
[email protected]

 

[superuser]

Re: Staccato 10 Micron

Hi all,
which plates do you prefer/use for 10µm FM? Kodak, Fuji, Agfa, others...?

 

[erikson73]

Re: Staccato 10 Micron

Thanks Gordon!

I will be more than happy if we can meet up when you are here in Singapore in September. I will arrange with you offline. At the mean time if you need to contact me offline, I can be reach at [email protected]

 

[erikson73]

Re: Staccato 10 Micron

Thanks Apurva!

Your "running press condition" results rather than "ideal test conditions" concept is indeed a good method. I will study into it seriously!

 

[erikson73]

Re: Staccato 10 Micron

Hi Superuser, my company use Kodak Gold DITP Thermal plates for both AM and FM (Stoccato 10 micron) printing jobs.

 

[Prepper]

Re: Staccato 10 Micron

I used to do that here, chase the current press conditions on any given day by tracking the curves and constantly adjusting them, then....we switched to running to gray balance at press, G7 method, and now I have one set of curves, and they run the press to gray balance which automatically adjusts for slight TVI variations in day to day operation, and also works on our coated and matte papers but I'm think I would have to have a different set of curves for uncoated but we don't run that here very often. Have done this for a year now and it's worked really well, proofs are made on an HP Z2100 using standard G7 profile as well and matches are really good.

The only deviation we've made from the standard profile is I modified it in Profilemaker to MaxK on GCR setting, this gives us increased gray stability which makes achieving and maintaining gray balance easier and saves ink.

Just another way.

 

[erikson73]

Re: Staccato 10 Micron

Hi Prepper, Thanks for your valuable contribution.