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The process controls market suffered the same fate as most other print sectors during the recession, with falling sales due to tightening budgets. Fortunately, there are now signs that things are picking up and that customers are looking to re-invest in quality control products as a result.
"We believe that printers are realising that good quality control techniques will help them retain their existing customers, as well as gain new ones," says Paul Foster, managing director at Ripware.
While printers are still obviously trying to cut costs, they are beginning to realise that money can be saved by checking plates before they go on press.
"Even if this detects just one faulty plate in a year, this could easily repay the investment made, especially when you factor in the cost involved in reprinting a job," adds Foster.
There are many variables in the print process that should be taken into consideration when measuring colour. While it's impossible to fingerprint every paper stock and weight for a press, printers can produce an average for types of paper, such as matt and gloss.
"If printers at least measure plate exposure, plate development and potential dot gain on press, they have a chance of being consistent" says Foster. "The customers of most printers would not necessarily know if a tint area, for example, is 30% or not. What they would recognise is that it is not the same as previously printed."
Product options
Densitometers measure ink density of CMYK, while spectrophotometers measure the whole colour gamut. According to Albin Baranauskas, sales and technical director for Europe at Techkon, it's better to invest in a spectrophotometer than a densitometer, as most spectrophotometers offer densitometric functions.
"A densitometer is good for density control of CMYK ink layers, but it doesn't give information about colour shades," he explains.
Meanwhile, dotmeters take a digital photograph of a few square millimetres of a plate, which can then be analysed.
"A customer must be able to check their plate with a dotmeter regularly and be very familiar with the dot gain curve manipulation," says Chris Wimbury, managing director at TSS technology.
At Ipex, printers can expect to see advances in technology that will help reduce the cost of ownership and increase productivity. Foster says it's worth talking to software providers to find out what level of support they will give to implement an ISO standard.
"By working to a standard, it has been proved that make-ready times can be significantly reduced," says Foster.
"If you want to hit the ISO targets it is very easy providing that you invest in some ISO certification software that can calculate dot gain curves accurately," adds Wimbury.
