Team Impression - Day 3

Today I spend the day doing a few different things. All really useful. Firstly I sat in with Eddie again and worked through imposing a few jobs. One in particular needed changing and was interesting. The client had sent through a 4pp A4 leaflet. There was a large shape derived from the logo that was a spot colour. The proofs had ben made and everything but the spot colour didn't look right, it didn't seem to be a colour that fitted the design at all. After getting in contact with the client it turned out that this was actually meant to be a spot varnish. Apparently problems arise quite often when people don't layer their layers and swatches correctly and things get confused. Also the spot varnish went completely over the centre fold. This was a problem as the varnish is prone to cracking under the fold. To solve this problem we put in a think band when the varnish would not go down 2mm thick over the fold.

We also dealt with a problematic job, the client had sent in about 6 sections for some kind of book but there was little information about it. We had to get the client to come and go through everything. The amount of pages didn't add up to anything in a multiple of four so it couldn't be saddle stitched or any other kind of normal bound. Also there was a lot of blank pages floating around. It turned out that it was meant for a ring bound folder so instead of things being done in fours, they were just single duplexed pages. We went back through, get rid of the pages that weren't needed. The biggest time consumer was that the designer had set up the document as spreads, the created a big problem as it meant that there was not allowance for bleed on the inner edged which the printer would need to do single duplexed sheets. We had to go through and replace a lot of the pages and add in bleed where needed which the client will get charged extra for as repro time.

In the afternoon I went down to get an introduction to where the plates are exposed. Liam showed me through the whole process as well as the old method, the old machine was still in storage upstairs and apparently still sometimes get used. The whole process is in fact a glorified version of exposing a screen for screen print. B1 and B2 plates are stored in the cartridges and when the separations are released from the computer, the machine takes a cartridge in, stamps holes in it to fit on the press. It then get wrapped around a barrel facing inwards where about 50 lasers expose the ink density all over it. The plate then gets transfered along a conveyor belt into the second section where the dev washes off all the excess coating, then the plate gets washed again, and finally gummed. The gum increases the shelf life or the plate as it is photosensitive and also makes it less likely the scratch, although I'm told they still do a lot of the time. He also showed me the way that they check the calibration of the imaging. Every monday they expose a B2 plate with a preset design, almost like a colour calibration test page on a printer. Then you use a little electronic device over certain ink densities like 5%, 25%, 50% ect and it measures accurately the density. There is a 3% tolerance before the machine needs re calibrating.

The PDFs of the new Grafik come in tonight and I'm told that by the time I get back tomorrow morning it will all have been imposed and the proofs will be coming out to get back to the client so hopefully I should get to see a bit of that going on.