Solar Powered Printing Press

A solar powered printing press still sounds futuristic, and probably little impractical, but in fact a working solar press was demonstrated back in the '80s.....the 1880's.

Abel Pifre demonstrated his press in 1882 and used sunlight concentrated using an 11 foot concave reflector. He envisioned the device being practical for areas such as Peru and Egypt, where sunlight is practical.

Sadly, while technically successful, the solar press never became a commercial success, Tony McGinley tells the whole story in his sustainable energy blog.

Overcoming G7 Process Control Resistance

It's a common pattern: Printers buy new hardware, new software and pony up for G7 qualification, only to find that within a few short weeks or months, the operation seems to be drifting away from G7 process control and back into old, unproductive habits. Fact is, this pattern is hardly the exception, it is more frequently the rule. While it is all to easy to find fault with the G7 methodology itself, the cause is something much more universal to all new technologies:

What we see as a failure of technology is most often not technical, but social and cultural. Attempts to make change usually falter not because the new way doesn’t work or because the product is faulty, but because not enough attention has been paid to the human factors that can make any kind of change a challenging proposition.

In other words, the challenge is less technical that behavioral, and success can only be gained by addressing the human and cultural issues. I've addressed this in an article written for PIA 's "Magazine". Read the whole thing here.

Process Control Habits

Coming into mid-Janurary, many people who had made resolutions to become fit are realizing that physical fitness is not a "once and done" project but a continuous habit of daily striving. Achieving true process control in a printing process is equally difficult, but far too many printers try to shortcut the process, thinking that a few days of intensive training or a quick G7 qualification will make their problems vanish. In almost every case, disappointment sets in quickly as management and staff fall back into old habits.

Moving from the old "seat-of-the-pants" approach to printing to a metrics-based approach of printing to standards requires a commitment very similar to a fitness plan....and just as much time. To achieve process control success on press, the pressroom must set up a program to exchange old habits for new ones.

Start the Change Cycle:

Set the New Pressroom Goal: Success requires an objective. Just obtaining G7 Master Printer status from a color consultant is not a goal...just a method. The goal must be to achieve true process control on press, based on objective standards based metrics.

Pursue the New Pressroom Goal: No matter how well your G7 Qualification went, you will not achieve 100% success right away...in fact, the trend is for the process to drift out of control until pressmen have fallen back onto old habits. try for small successes, like consistent density readings, first.

Achieve the New Pressroom Goal: Unfortunately, few pressrooms achieve the goal of true process control. If you do, consider yourselves the exception...and smile.

Repeat: Success is never forever. The process will drift, problems will crop up, old habits will come back. Process control is a habit, not an event. For more ideas on continuous improvement in the pressroom, visit me at Color Clarity.

Simplicity: It Works in Print, Too

I often visit printers who have dozens (or hundreds) of plate compensation curves in their workflow. In every case, the curves have been created in an effort to extract the best possible quality, and there are plate curves for every possible use: for coated, for uncoated, for particular proofing systems, for particular jobs, for particular printing presses, and so on. On top of that, plate curves are never thrown away, so the list grows longer and longer over the years, until it becomes nearly impossible to find the right on.

Time spent looking for the right compensation curve increases, as does the probbility of something going wrong.

On of my first moves in a printing plant is to make those curves go away, replaced by a small suite of very effective curves. Why? Because it's simple, and it works. Simplicity makes people smarter, while coomplexity, by making things more complicated, has the effect of making people stupider.

Eric Burke, in his Sutffthathappens blog, has a great post on simplicity. A picture is worth a thousand words...check it out.

Soft Technology Implementation in Print

We have many new technologies developing in print: softproofiing, digital, ink optimization and print verification to name a few. But it is looking more and more like the real advances that can be gained in print hinge on human issues, more than purely technical fixes.

What brought this point home was a recent podcast on web optimization. It was only very recently that search engine optimization or SEO was considered a geek's paradise, requiring lots of obscure knowledge, exotic software programs and so on. In other words, the problem of SEO was seen as a purely technical one, requiring a technical fix. The technology has evolved, however, as has the required approach. Now that the technology has become accessible and easier to use, the purely technical approach no longer delivers results. What does work is the very old fashioned element of actual content: people using their brains to actually extend some real knowledge.

What's the connection to printing? Many of the difficult to use and expensive technologies have become inexpensive and easier to use, but the missing ingredient-continuous human effort to make continuous improvement-are all to often missing. This is bad news for operations who have made heavy capital expenditures for expensive presses and workflow systems that are poorly used but very good for lean operations who have learned to use their existing equipment effectively, and employed smart solutions to leverage what they already have.

How complicated is ISO 12647, anyway?

Printers who just finally started paying attention to tracking their densities have been a little shaken by the G7 groundswell, and feel overwhelmed by rumors of some ISO thing out there. ISO? Isn't that some European thing, like the metric system? Why do things keep changing? What happened to good old fashioned printing?

It's true that ISO 12647-2 is probably the most-talked about, longest, and least read publication (at least in the United States) since "The Name of the Rose", but boiled down to its essentials it is straightforward and familiar. Latest editions have gone colorimetric, but the original edition was all about density, dot gain.....oh, and gray balance.

To help cut through the fog, take a look at this post-it-note sized condensation of ISO 12647-2, from the original 1996 edition. It may be a golden oldie, but I'll bet it looks pretty familiar to many offset printers who never heard of the original standard.

What is most important to Digital Print Buyers?

Bob Wagner asked the question, "What's important to digital print buyers" and the answer may surprise you. On a listing of importance, price was in 5th place. Most important? Dependability, followed by print quality and turnaround time. What does this mean to digital printers? Competing on price alone may be a poor strategy. Go for quality and service. Read it here.

Cal poly presents 2011 International Printing Week

San Luis Obispo – Cal Poly’s Graphic Communication Department has announced the lineup for its 2011 International Printing Week, set for Jan. 25-28.

The theme of the four-day event is “Graphic Communication – The Production of Knowledge.” The program will include seminars by industry leaders, laboratory dedications, demonstrations, a career fair, a banquet and the department’s winter advisory board meeting. All seminars and demonstrations are conducted on campus. Industry members are invited to attend the seminars. Check out the details here.