The Perfect Lithographic Ink - Not Yet Born - Year 2012

[Dan Roll]

At my last job I purchased a Kershaw emulsification tester and my technicians thought it to be a big improvement over the Duke machine (primarily because it was easier and less time consuming to clean) but I never found it to be particularly useful for fountain solution/ink research. For emulsion evaluation, a Leeds+Northrup Microtrac X100 particle size analyzer provided more useful data (again, a cleaning problem when using ink you would only assign to an employee you wouldn't mind losing) but was more useful for quality control for silicone and other emulsion products. One of the main problems in evaluating fountain solution/ink emulsions is they tend to be more or less unstable (not necessarily a bad thing) making the particle sizes and dispersion age-dependent to the point that you had to guess what the values might of been on press. If you have to guess anyway, why spend thirty thousand dollars on a piece of analytical equipment?

 

[Dan Roll]

"There were also a lot of interesting papers by Goss (Rockwell Int.) that looked at some press dynamic issues of inking and water application. Unfortunately that did not prevent them from making a complete mess out of a press concept called a "Positive Feed Keyless" system in around 1995. They sold about four of these press concepts but I understand they had to convert all of them back to conventional ink fountains. At that time, it took me about 30 minutes of analysis to see that that concept was unworkable."

Yes, I was involved in that fiasco peripherally, I had many conversations with Ragy Isaac at Goss suggesting that I thought they were all crazy and about to waste a huge amount of money, but I have never had any luck telling engineers anything.

 

[Deleted member 16349]

"There were also a lot of interesting papers by Goss (Rockwell Int.) that looked at some press dynamic issues of inking and water application. Unfortunately that did not prevent them from making a complete mess out of a press concept called a "Positive Feed Keyless" system in around 1995. They sold about four of these press concepts but I understand they had to convert all of them back to conventional ink fountains. At that time, it took me about 30 minutes of analysis to see that that concept was unworkable."

Yes, I was involved in that fiasco peripherally, I had many conversations with Ragy Isaac at Goss suggesting that I thought they were all crazy and about to waste a huge amount of money, but I have never had any luck telling engineers anything.

Its a small world. I sent a letter to the Goss engineering group in 1996 with the analysis of that press. It showed that the very low coverage would be supplied with twice as much ink to the plate as the 100% coverage. Of course this is terrible performance but I suspect they never analyzed it that way.

I was a bit surprised to get a reply letter about three months later and they confirmed my analysis but they felt that for newspaper inks, which are weaker than commercial inks, this meant the situation was not so poor. They were nice enough to supply a very nice newspaper ink mileage plot.

So the engineers at Goss (Rockwell) did know the problem at that time.

Also in my letter I commented on the problems they have with their digital inker related to slow response time and lack of tight control. They did not respond to that, which is unfortunate because they still have this problem with their current DigiRail inking system. After all this time, they are still trying to push a technology that is not suitable for short runs, which they could have easily corrected over 15 years ago.

Somewhat similar analysis of the KBA Cortina press shows that it will deliver about 20% more ink for very low coverage than for 100% coverage. The Cortina is a workable design for newspapers but it would not be so good for commercial or packaging printing.

Millions and millions of dollars wasted and time wasted because the engineering groups in these companies are designing presses based on hunches and a few tests but without the help of theoretical knowledge. They are still in this condition. As an engineer, I find this a shameful situation.

 

[Cornishpastythighs]

“Strive for perfection in everything you do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it.”
Sir Henry Royce

 

[Dan Roll]

Replacing simple mechanisms with complex ones that may (or may not) work marginally better than the ones they replace is not what was, or is, needed to improve printing presses. Businesses buy presses to make them some money and the more complex the machine is, the more likely time and money will be spent on maintenance and parts rather than producing product. I am not anti-progress, but when I look at new machines being introduced I often have to wonder if printers are objectively evaluating their ROI on new technologies. Really new technology does not have have an enviable track record of being introduced into the printing industry without some setbacks and early adopters are punished more often than rewarded, it seems to me.
That said, let me introduce my miracle new product!!!!!/