Which is more important, Stock conditioning or Pressroom Conditions?
- Thread starter DeletedMemberx0938140
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Re: Which is more important, Stock conditioning or Pressroom Conditions?
Dwane,
I agree with your assessment for the most part. It has been a while since I ran a press. When I did I found if the paper was perfect, acclimated to our shop for at least 24 hours, wrapped and weighted (We would place a dolly or pallet on the top of the skid and weight it down with 80 lbs of lead to keep it tight - 40 lbs if already printed on one side) it always ran better. We began noticing if the weather was quick to change it was our back ups and additional pass runs once the stock was open that we had issue with. So if your press can finish your work in one pass the pressroom will have less effect than the stock. About 15% humidity difference and 10 degrees temperature is the limit to this, as we found it to be in our conditions. If the stock is cross grained, or the amount of ink coverage is great 340% over more than half the sheet then the pressrooms conditions come back into play in a big way. We had a cross grained high coverage job that looked great, the width had changed as the ink dried and we had to under cut it to make it work. Running the paper long grain with the cylinder width, keeping the humidity between 45 and 55% in the pressroom and the temperature at 74 degrees = or - 3 degrees kept us out of trouble. Our pressroom generated allot of heat, I know this is better now, we had a heat and air guy who really did a great job monitoring our conditions. So we could keep the production area just so. I realize we run allot of our jobs right off the truck these days and the winter months are when we see the difference in what we can "get away with". We do allot of printing on vinyl, and specialty plastics like cling z and that makes a difference in an exponential sense.
We are at 40 ft above sea level on the east coast, I never have looked at the differences in elevation to this process as we only have one location.
Hope this helps,
Andy
Dwane,
I agree with your assessment for the most part. It has been a while since I ran a press. When I did I found if the paper was perfect, acclimated to our shop for at least 24 hours, wrapped and weighted (We would place a dolly or pallet on the top of the skid and weight it down with 80 lbs of lead to keep it tight - 40 lbs if already printed on one side) it always ran better. We began noticing if the weather was quick to change it was our back ups and additional pass runs once the stock was open that we had issue with. So if your press can finish your work in one pass the pressroom will have less effect than the stock. About 15% humidity difference and 10 degrees temperature is the limit to this, as we found it to be in our conditions. If the stock is cross grained, or the amount of ink coverage is great 340% over more than half the sheet then the pressrooms conditions come back into play in a big way. We had a cross grained high coverage job that looked great, the width had changed as the ink dried and we had to under cut it to make it work. Running the paper long grain with the cylinder width, keeping the humidity between 45 and 55% in the pressroom and the temperature at 74 degrees = or - 3 degrees kept us out of trouble. Our pressroom generated allot of heat, I know this is better now, we had a heat and air guy who really did a great job monitoring our conditions. So we could keep the production area just so. I realize we run allot of our jobs right off the truck these days and the winter months are when we see the difference in what we can "get away with". We do allot of printing on vinyl, and specialty plastics like cling z and that makes a difference in an exponential sense.
We are at 40 ft above sea level on the east coast, I never have looked at the differences in elevation to this process as we only have one location.
Hope this helps,
Andy
Re: Which is more important, Stock conditioning or Pressroom Conditions?
I live in Arkansas and we have a non climate controlled shop during the summer. We have a web press and just recently bought our first sheetfed a GTO. Nice press, especially after running a 25 year old half web for 15 years.
IMO temperature control is everything. Not so much with paper on a web but sheetfed YES!
Our Web press paper will give us some trouble after it's been sheeted especially if it's raining and the doors are wide open because it's July.
It's not just the paper that needs conditioning. The press does too. Ink and water balance come into play. Heat just does darn things to print production period from employee morale to stock conditions.
Nice topic Dwayne. It's good to read pressman post's and not just prepress tech post's. My duties involve both departments. The pressroom is where it's at but that opinion has varied for me over the years.
I live in Arkansas and we have a non climate controlled shop during the summer. We have a web press and just recently bought our first sheetfed a GTO. Nice press, especially after running a 25 year old half web for 15 years.
IMO temperature control is everything. Not so much with paper on a web but sheetfed YES!
Our Web press paper will give us some trouble after it's been sheeted especially if it's raining and the doors are wide open because it's July.
It's not just the paper that needs conditioning. The press does too. Ink and water balance come into play. Heat just does darn things to print production period from employee morale to stock conditions.
Nice topic Dwayne. It's good to read pressman post's and not just prepress tech post's. My duties involve both departments. The pressroom is where it's at but that opinion has varied for me over the years.
Re: Which is more important, Stock conditioning or Pressroom Conditions?
I print on uncoated 27.6 lb. paper now on a web press but I started on a sheetfeed press 30 years ago.
Enviroment of the paper and press needs to stay the same. And it is true the lighter the stock the more it is effected by the enviroment it is in. But you must remember that
uncoat stock produces more paper dust that will acculate on the sucker feet and will need cleaning before runinng coated stock, because coated stock is effect more by trash on the surface that is making the contact.
Paper dust can also tranfer to the ink train via the blanket and cause problems
during long runs.
I print on uncoated 27.6 lb. paper now on a web press but I started on a sheetfeed press 30 years ago.
Enviroment of the paper and press needs to stay the same. And it is true the lighter the stock the more it is effected by the enviroment it is in. But you must remember that
uncoat stock produces more paper dust that will acculate on the sucker feet and will need cleaning before runinng coated stock, because coated stock is effect more by trash on the surface that is making the contact.
Paper dust can also tranfer to the ink train via the blanket and cause problems
during long runs.
Re: Which is more important, Stock conditioning or Pressroom Conditions?
In my thirty three years in the trade I've heard many times from many pressmen and even more book binders that conditioning the stock is the best thing you can do to improve paper performance on the press. Having a controlled environment press room is good but having the stock conditioned was more of a gain. The only problem seems to be in getting the stock ordered before the job runs.
In my thirty three years in the trade I've heard many times from many pressmen and even more book binders that conditioning the stock is the best thing you can do to improve paper performance on the press. Having a controlled environment press room is good but having the stock conditioned was more of a gain. The only problem seems to be in getting the stock ordered before the job runs.
DeletedMemberx0938140
Well-known member
Re: Which is more important, Stock conditioning or Pressroom Conditions?
Thanks for everyone's response.
We've been air-conditioning our stock for approximately 12-24 hours on some jobs recently (our new CTP meant we have a free room to air-condition stock!) with reasonable success.
I've uploaded a youtube video and you can view it at the link below. We managed to feed at 14,000 IPH quite consistently except for cut-outs due to damaged paper (Crumpled corners) and a delivery crash-sensor over-sensitivity.
[Sakurai 466SIP, 110gsm Uncoated @ 14,000 IPH|http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swhOqJaLXqc#]
Second side was a lot of problems at 12,000 IPH so Andy's right about the room conditions coming more into play in two sided work.
BTW I'm looking at [www.loc-line.com|www.loc-line.com] for some interesting retro-fits.
Thanks for everyone's response.
We've been air-conditioning our stock for approximately 12-24 hours on some jobs recently (our new CTP meant we have a free room to air-condition stock!) with reasonable success.
I've uploaded a youtube video and you can view it at the link below. We managed to feed at 14,000 IPH quite consistently except for cut-outs due to damaged paper (Crumpled corners) and a delivery crash-sensor over-sensitivity.
[Sakurai 466SIP, 110gsm Uncoated @ 14,000 IPH|http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swhOqJaLXqc#]
Second side was a lot of problems at 12,000 IPH so Andy's right about the room conditions coming more into play in two sided work.
BTW I'm looking at [www.loc-line.com|www.loc-line.com] for some interesting retro-fits.
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