The decline in the press market

[Al Ferrari]

Where are these legendary machines? I have never seen them in forty years of printing. I assume you mean "copiers" you can call them digital or whatever but toner based machines are slow and expensive. Period. And require very little intelligence to operate. That's why they are so popular. Productive? Hardly.

If you would trouble yourself to read his whole post and go to the posted link, you would at minimum realize that the conversation is not about copiers or any sort of digital printers.

Al

 

[wld85022]

If you would trouble yourself to read his whole post and go to the posted link, you would at minimum realize that the conversation is not about copiers or any sort of digital printers.

Al

When talking about the 3 to 1 replacement b.s. it means just what I said.

if you have been awake during the past twenty years it should be obvious that offset has died and given way to digital. dumb choice but then again this country (US of A ) isn't known for smart management or innovation. those days are behind us.


Now pour some sugar on your snark.

 

[Green Printer]

I love this keep it coming. The more remarks and comments creates a view of perceptions and understandings of what is construed to be the difference between actuality and mythology.

 

[Dan Roll]

Those who say offset is dead are obviously not involved in high volume printing. Certainly the business is in decline, but not because of any lack of productivity, quality, or low cost inherent to the offset process, rather a reduction in demand for these products at the same time the industry ramped up its production capacity dramatically.

 

[Green Printer]

I recall back in the 1980s Bakker Perkins had an ink ducker system very simmilar to this...it had its problems....

The Aller ductor worked as a single unit you could not adjust segments and you still needed an ink fountain that had ink keys.

 

[john beniston]

As we have said many times in the past Eric. The inker is just not up to par and you know my views on that contraption called an ink ductor.
I still maintain that a single plate inking roller, format sized should ink the plate and deposit an exactly predictable ink film to all areas of it, no matter what the image is. If it is all done properly we would not need all those dozens of expensive servo motors and remote controlled ink ducts. Keyless is the way with a properly designed inker. If the ink metering system is properly designed and engineered we will have a situation where we can build quality in to the process and it be will be predictable.

 

[Deleted member 16349]

As we have said many times in the past Eric. The inker is just not up to par and you know my views on that contraption called an ink ductor.
I still maintain that a single plate inking roller, format sized should ink the plate and deposit an exactly predictable ink film to all areas of it, no matter what the image is. If it is all done properly we would not need all those dozens of expensive servo motors and remote controlled ink ducts. Keyless is the way with a properly designed inker. If the ink metering system is properly designed and engineered we will have a situation where we can build quality in to the process and it be will be predictable.

There are a lot of interesting advantages with a single form roller concept and actual there are different ways to do this.

One can do it the way Heidelberg (Anicolor) and others have done with a single form roller that is the same diameter as the plate and inks the plate in register. It needs to ink the plate in register because the ink film on that single ink form is not uniform everywhere. It is uniform in the image areas at a lower ink film thickness than the uniform ink film in the non image area. That is why it needs to be in register to avoid ghosting.

One can also have a single ink form roller that is not the same diameter as the plate cylinder but is inked so that there is a uniform ink film everywhere on that form roller. This too would ink the plate in a uniform way and maybe better than the Anicolor method since there would not be an issue with uneven ink films in the screened areas.

The keyless part is something I am not so keen on unless someone comes up with some new approach. Using an anilox roller to provide the keyless function is simple but it also has its limitations. It will not isolate the ink supply from back trapped ink contamination and water coming from the single ink form.

It is great to simplify as long as one can keep the positive benefits.

 

[Green Printer]

This Gravure article is loaded with info that also relates to anilox rollers. An anilox roller has many similarities to a gravure printing cylinder as does the ink transfer from the cells.


http://cias.rit.edu/~gravure/gravure/pdf/gravure_day2010/10gday_wu.pdf

 

[Mike Herndon]

What a great thread, one of the best I have read in a long time. Thanks everyone for posting up different ideas and I agree, ink feed technology has not changed much in the last 30+ years.

Offset dying- maybe some day but for us now we run 24 hours 7 days a week and outsource up to 1 million sheets a month. That's more of indication of our market though, not the technology behind the equipment.

One machine to replace 3 that's possible too. I could see a new XL106 replacing 2 of our aging sm102s but for 4 million dollars? I would rather invest that money into new technology that would eliminate the make ready, color variation, and color inconsistency in the run.

Our 8 color press is old, we have it dialed in ok, the average 4/4 m/r on a 70# coated is around 150 sheets. Pretty good for a 12 year old press but I'd like to see it at 1 sheet. Not possible I know but why not try? 60% of the job cost is paper.

Single form roller concept I need to read up on, sounds interesting.

Mike