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Showing posts from January, 2013

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

The Torque Wrench - A Critical Printing Tool

I would like to talk about a tool that has many uses in the press room, but one purpose is especially critical - torquing blankets. We have found the need recently to get ours calibrated.  The reason being is that, through use, they lose their calibration over time.  We had a "specialist" come in recently to calibrate ours.  They were not far out of calibration, but nonetheless were off the target. A torque wrench's calibration is especially important when mounting blankets for the following reasons: Too much torque can cause the blanket to lose height over the cylinder.  See also how blankets are made . Too little torque can cause the blanket to be loose and cause everything from web breaks to slur . Blankets can begin to tear over time at the cylinder gap if they are over tightened. Tips to Extend Life of a Torque Wrench I would like to share a couple of tips given to us for the sake of extending the life of our torque wrenches and maintaining the

Tips About Splice Tape For Web Offset Printing

I want to share a few tips on splice tape that we have learned recently.  Above is a splice that we normally set for our flying paster, or splicer as many call it.  Some presses use zero speed splicers and a couple of the points here can be applicable.  The main point though is that splice tape must be as sticky as possible. Below I describe our problem, but I would suggest you familiarize yourself with what a flying paster is if you do not have one.  Or  watch this video of ours . The problem that we have had over the colder months is that splice tape is not as effective on cold rolls.  We miss splices because the tape doesn't stick as well to the cold paper.  To stick at high speeds with low temperatures places high demands on the tape.  High speed video revealed that the paper just wasn't sticking properly from the expiring roll to the new one.   Megtec themselves admit this problem .  Therefore we found ourselves missing about 1 in 10 splices.  I visited several