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Showing posts from January, 2011

How To Make Printing Ink

  Introduction Printing ink is so much more than just the black stuff that you put on a page. It has been around for thousands of years, and it's been used in everything from newspaper presses to digital printers. As you can see, we're not talking about offset printing ink which is oil based. I want to have a little fun and talk about how you can make your own ink for your printer.  At home! Ready? Ingredients You will need the following ingredients: Soot (5 tbsp) : This is as purest as it gest. You can make the soot yourself by holding a glass up to a flame. This will allow you to slowly accumulate the soot. Water (2 tbsp): For the base of your ink, use distilled water so that you don't introduce any impurities into the mix. Distilled water is also easier to clean up than tap water because there are no minerals or residue left behind from tap water. Alcohol (2 tbsp) (grain alcohol): This ingredient works as a preservative for your ink and allows it to last for several mo

Cylinder Bearers - Setting and Maintaining Them

Cylinder Bearers that are cleaned and lubricated within the printing unit cylinders can be likened to changing the oil in your car.  The immediate consequence of neglecting it may not be apparent for some time.  But you will pay the price later.  Cylinder bearer felts protect a vital function of the press, your bearer height. Not long ago, three of our offset printing presses were sold to a buyer in India, a booming printing economy that is buying up a lot of North American used printing equipment.  Since they had already purchased offset presses from our printing plant, they knew that we maintained our equipment well.  Not surprisingly though, the very first order of business was to check the condition of the cylinder bearers.  Thankfully, 20 years of changing the bearer felts paid off and the cylinder bearers were in good condition.  That was enough to convince them that they had a good used piece of equipment.  They bought all three presses, which I might add was during a soft

What Is Heatset Printing?

Heatset printing is a process that dries printing ink in a heated oven immediately after the ink is applied to the paper. Heat evaporates the oils in the ink and leaves the pigment along with wax resins. The ink is then "set" by means of cold rollers. Heatset web offset printing is simply a term to describe one of several web  While some sites provide a very basic description, I will endeavor to give a little more detail on the level that a press operator should know. Heatset printing also differs from more commonly known forms of printing.  For example, a bubble jet printer works by spraying ink onto paper.  The ink absorbs into the paper and the water based ink will evaporate leaving a dried pigment on the paper.  It behaves in a similar way to Heatset web printing works differently.  A layer of ink is applied to a usually glossy paper that does not allow the ink to absorb into the paper.  The ink is not water based, but oil based meaning that it must literally boil or