Plate curve for stacatto on silk

[PlateSmith]

I'm part of a team of prepress and press workers who have been figuring out the best plate curves for each line screen and paper combination. We are finally at a point where everyone seems satisfied with our plate curves, except for stacatto jobs on Silk Paper.  We're thinking about recommending that if a customer wants silk stock, that we print it at 200LS instead of stacatto.  It's been tough to get any accurate feedback, because we don't do a large percentage of our jobs on silk stock.

Right now we just use a staccato text weight curve for the silk jobs, and this causes the dot gains to be low.  Our stacatto cover curve would bring up the dot gains, but I'm pretty sure those settings won't be convenient for press.

If anyone has any feedback I'd appreciate it, and thanks Jim for recommending this forum.

[PlateSmith]

Oops, this should probably be in the CTP - CTF category.  Can't tell I'm new here.

[Joe]

Oops, this should probably be in the CTP - CTF category.  Can't tell I'm new here.

done...

[ninjaPB_43]

may sound like a simplified answer and really its just a guess, because we dont print Stacatto or on Silk Stock..   but if your dot gain is low enough, have you considered just running linear for that? 

...and there I go back to the bar to goof off some more..    sorry Im not much help.   

[jimking]

I'm part of a team of prepress and press workers who have been figuring out the best plate curves for each line screen and paper combination. We are finally at a point where everyone seems satisfied with our plate curves, except for stacatto jobs on Silk Paper.  We're thinking about recommending that if a customer wants silk stock, that we print it at 200LS instead of stacatto.  It's been tough to get any accurate feedback, because we don't do a large percentage of our jobs on silk stock.

Right now we just use a staccato text weight curve for the silk jobs, and this causes the dot gains to be low.  Our stacatto cover curve would bring up the dot gains, but I'm pretty sure those settings won't be convenient for press.

If anyone has any feedback I'd appreciate it, and thanks Jim for recommending this forum.

Welcome to b4print Platesmith. I wish I had a better answer for you than I did at GDF, just one of my grey areas with several varibles to consider. Hang in there and someone will come along.

[David]

have you run a press test on silk to see what your dot gain will be?

If you can't do a press test, what we've done in the past is to put some scales ( 1, 5, 10, 25, 50, 75, 90, 95, 100)on a regular job, and then at the end of the run, tail in some different stock so that we can get a chance to measure it to see where we're at.

In your case just get a few sheets of Silk (maybe 100 or so) and run them on your next staccato job, you may be surprised at what it does.


my .02

David

[ninjaPB_43]

have you run a press test on silk to see what your dot gain will be?

If you can't do a press test, what we've done in the past is to put some scales ( 1, 5, 10, 25, 50, 75, 90, 95, 100)on a regular job, and then at the end of the run, tail in some different stock so that we can get a chance to measure it to see where we're at.

In your case just get a few sheets of Silk (maybe 100 or so) and run them on your next staccato job, you may be surprised at what it does.


my .02

David

^  that's a smart man there..       measure without having a setup or much time wasted, no extra plates wasted either..

[PlateSmith]

Excellent, that is a great way to do a press test.  This has to be the best forum I've ever joined!