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Expert in Commercial Sheetfed Printing; Offset Printing; Platemaking
Available for your Consulting and Expert Witness Needs
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Summary of Expertise:
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As Plant Manager, Expert has had experience with a foremost leading sheetfed printing company on the introduction of anilox roll into its pressroom. This was new technology to this company at that time, as in previous aqueous coating applications in the pressroom was done by conventional application methods. Expert's experience came from the training program (with the press crews), and in the research and purchasing of additional anilox rolls with different angles and "line screens" for various aqueous coating applications, as well as the constant testing and monitoring on press, (with the press crews), of the performance of the various types anilox rolls. An anilox roll is a specially designed roll that is used in flexographic printing and on sheetfed printing machines that come with aqueous coating units. It is a special roll that controls the amount of Aqueous Coating that is applied to a press sheet (in sheetfed) or used in flexographic printing with the use of a "Doctor Blade" to control the amount of ink applied to the sheet, by printing onto a rubber blanket mounted cylinder and then on to the press sheet the same as a conventional printing unit. An anilox roll is a hard cylinder, usually constructed of steel or aluminum and is then coated with a special industrial ceramic coating. The anilox roll contains very fine cells or "line screen" and is laser engraved. The higher the cells or "line screen" the finer amount of ink or Aqueous Coating is applied to the press sheet. The lower the cells or "line screen" the more ink or Aqueous Coating is applied to the press sheet. The anilox roll's ceramic surface is quite delicate, and great care must be taken of it to prevent dents, scratches and nicks. It must also be cleaned very regularly to avoid the cells or "line screen" becoming clogged up with ink or Aqueous Coating.
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As a pressman for well over 20 years, Expert has had "hands-on" experience with black inks from letterpress, then onto offset printing, and later on in his career as a Supervisor and Plant Manager. The introduction of 4 color process printing was a revolution in it's time, as the black ink (Along with c, m, y) were the first fully transparent inks. Expert has worked closely with major international ink companies, to produce blacks of different shades in the 4 colour process and overprinting blacks arena for his company's specific needs, including the change over from solvent based inks to vegetable oil based inks, in black inks and all other colors. This was due to the environmental concerns and the gradual elimination of industrial alcohol (Isopropyl). (For 6 years Expert was on the board of the BC CleanPrint Committee along with representatives of the Federal, Provincial, Local Governments and representatives of all parts of the printing industry including suppliers, in a serious attempt to clean up (through environmental concerns) the BC Printing Industry). Black ink is the most commonly used color in the world of graphic arts and printing, whether it is sheetfed, web (newspapers and commercial printing), flexography, gravure, photocopiers, laser printing, or any printed or written media. In the printing world black ink comes in variety of shades, transparencies and finishes depending on what is being printed, and on what types of papers. In 4 color process black ink is transparent and gives the continuous tone image, clarity in it's hi-lights, quarter tones and mid-tones. Black strictly speaking is NOT a color (hue) because it is void of any reflective tendencies, as black absorbs all light and does not reflect light in any visible part of the spectrum.
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Expert was given the task of researching alternatives to infra-red drying of coating for several reasons. Coating was primarily ammonia based, and with the infra-red drying, the coating on the printed sheet dry rock hard within 12 hours, making it almost impossible to print and coat on 2 sides of the sheet. Expert got in contact with a major printing machine manufacturers and suppliers to enquire about alternative methods of drying coating other than infra-red dryers. They had worked with another company and developed hot air knives, where it would dry the surface of the printed sheet, but not dry rock hard solid for 24 - 30 hours. Expert then contacted some users of hot air knives and found they had great success with the hot air knives. Expert also contacted the manufacturer of the coating to reduce the amount of ammonia in the coating, and had the hot air knives installed, with far better results and hardly used the infra-red dryers for drying coating. Coating drying primarily is done on printing presses that are fitted with A) Infra-red dryers or preferably B) with hot air knives, ideally with both systems installed when the press is new. Infra-red dryers are long and short wave heater bars that can be turned off or on at will, depending on how much (if any) heat the pressman needs to dry the coated printed sheet. If the press has hot air knives most pressmen much prefer to use those as coating dries better and quicker with air circulation rather that heat. If the sheet has to be printed the other side and coated, no heat should be applied to the press sheet and as little hot air as possible due to "re-wetting" (softening) the coating on the first side of the sheet, as the printed sheets tend to stick together.
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Expert has seen dramatic changes over the last 15 years or so to the offset printing, offset plates and the world of color printing. Expert was very privileged to be involved with and work for a very well reputed company that is known for it's leading edge technological commitment, and was one of the beta site companies for the world pioneer developer in CTP (computer-to-plate) called Creo. Along with computer-to-plate technology, stochastic screening, positive plates and much updated fully automated printing presses, the world of printing, especially color printing changed forever. Expert helped to develop and was involved with all of the changes especially with the presses and press crews in his roles as Supervisor and Plant Manager. All of the existing presses had to be adapted and changed over (rollers, fountain etch, ink settings, etc.) to accept the the new computer-to-plate workflow after extensive testing was performed. Full color printing is generally performed on multi-color presses consisting of 4 printing units or more, in some cases some presses are equipped with 8, 10 or 12 printing units. These types of presses are usually "perfecting" presses that can print on both sides of the sheet at the same time, so the press sheet is ready to go into the bindery with just a single pass through the press. Each printing unit is a separate color i.e. 1st unit: black, 2nd unit: cyan, 3rd unit: magenta, 4th unit: yellow, and prints from the respective color printing plate(s). The blank paper is put in the feeder, printing plates are put on their respective printing units, ink put in the ink fountains and the press is ready to print. The printing plate prints onto a rubber blanket, which in turn prints it onto the paper, as the paper passes between the rubber blanket and impression cylinder (hence the term "offset"). The same process happens as the paper passes through each printing unit and comes out in the delivery as a full color printed sheet.
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During Expert's 6 year apprenticeship in England, he was employed as a letterpress pressman, and as an apprentice Expert spent 3 months in every production department including: hand composing, typesetting, bindery and then settled in the pressroom as a pressman. He attended trade college for 6 years, and graduated with the City and Guilds London Institute certificates in Intermediate and Final in Letterpress Printing. During his apprenticeship Expert was taught how halftones were made, to handle and store them, and how to properly cut overlays and to do a proper make-ready on press. Halftone printing is a photograph (color or black and white), original painting or any other type of image that needs to be printed in which continuous tone is simulated by conventional screening, or more recently by a new screening process called "stochastic" which allows a much sharper image to be printed. Halftone printing is either in black or white or in full color and can be printed by letterpress (usually using conventional screening) normally black and white or by offset lithography in full color or black and white. In letterpress printing the halftone is normally etched onto a copper printing as a reverse image, so when printed onto the paper the image becomes a "read right" image. Letterpress printing does not use any water with the printing ink, and the make-readies are often very long and slow as all overlays used in the make-ready are usually cut by hand and mounted onto the press by hand underneath the tympan on the impression cylinder. The ink setting is also done by manual means, where as in offset lithography make-readies are much more automated and a lot quicker including ink setting. The desired re-production of the halftone is also very much dependent on the type of paper to be used in the actual printing. Book papers usually give a lower quality printed image, where as coated papers such as glossy, matte and dull coated papers give a much higher quality to the printed image.
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Expert was introduced to magnetic ink when he emigrated to New Zealand (NZ). He went to work for NZ's largest printing company that had 16 printing plants in NZ, with book store outlets all over the world. Expert first worked as a letterpress pressman for 8 months and then he was asked to go to the Encoding Department. In that department they printed all of the banks printing requirements in NZ, including bonds, company and personal checks, travelers' checks, anything that was security. Expert was running a press that encoded checks using magnetic ink and paper plates. During Expert's last 11 months with that company, he promoted to Office Manager of the Encoding Department. Expert then immigrated to Canada as a pressman, so the use of magnetic ink was no stranger to him, when he called on to use it, or in later years as a supervisor or manager. Magnetic ink is classified as a security ink (along with water soluble printing inks), as it is generally black in color and consists of extremely fine particles of metal in the ink. Magnetic inks are encoding inks used for the encoding of security documents such as: personal and company checks, travelers' checks, money orders, bonds, share certificates and any documents that are of a high security nature. Magnetic inks can be used by either letterpress or lithographic offset processes and need a special magnetic reader to be validated. All of the characters, numbers, special bar codes used in security documents are of a particular special design and can only be read by the special magnetic reader. The density of ink (film thickness) used when printing using magnetic inks is crucial, the variation in tolerance level is very small, and the reject rate by the magnetic reader can be very high if the density of ink is too high or too low. Printers who use magnetic inks have to have a magnetic reader to be able to produce an acceptable and usable product. Magnetic inks are NOT the same as used in packaging bar-coding (which is normal offset inks and in any color).
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Expert has been employed primarily in commercial sheet-fed plants, that produced all sorts of high end commercial printing, form limited art edition prints, annual reports, advertising to general commercial printing. Having been involved that sales, clients, paper company sales representatives and pre-production planning meetings, Expert has gained a very extensive knowledge of all types and grades offset papers. In his roles as pressman, Supervisor and Plant Manager, that knowledge has proved to be invaluable with his company's' sales, planning and production staff to help achieve not only very satisfied clients, but internally satisfaction as well. Offset papers range very widely from very thin paper 30 lbs up to 0.040" paperboard and even higher. The range of papers used in offset printing is very wide from uncoated papers such as: newsprint, book papers, chipboard, uncoated offset papers such as text and cover weights, bond paper, copier paper, onion skin and suchlike papers. Coated papers such as: glossy text and cover weight papers, matte coated text and cover weight papers, dull text and cover weight papers, NCR paper, clay coated paperboard, and many other specialty papers. Most of these papers can be printed on regular paper offset presses including paperboard up to 0.018" in thickness, above 0.018" should be printed on a board press which is specially designed to use heavy weight paperboard, to avoid serious damage to the regular paper press. The paperboard press is specially designed for paperboard, right from the feeder to the delivery including every aspect of the press including: feeder, grippers, impression cylinders, transfer grippers, registration, delivery to name just a few considerations. Ink and water balance is also different from coated to uncoated papers, higher for uncoated papers and lower for coated papers, primarily due to the finishing of the different papers.
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Expert has a very extensive knowledge and experience in paperboard conversion, both in house and external by the use of trade house finishing houses. He would start by pre-production meeting, sales and client meetings or in the quotation stage to see if the paper materials chosen were suitable for that particular project, especially if the project had very intricate finishing and was being outsourced to a trade house. Expert would often go to a trade house to approve the finishing or work being done on the project to ensure satisfaction all round and the project would go as planned. Paperboard conversion is the finishing of paperboard after it has come off the printing press, and ready to enter into it's final finishing stage including: scoring, diecutting, foiling, embossing, debossing, laminating, case binding, silk screening (as in "scratch off" i.e. lottery tickets etc), gluing for pocket folders or boxes, waxing, eyeletting, punching, folding, forming or any finishing that needs to be done.
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In one of Expert's roles as Supervisor he was in charge of the afternoon shift where all aspects of the shift reported to him, as he was responsible for the shift as well as the whole building, security and clients and all of the company staff. During this time Expert was very heavily involved in pre-press and platemaking to ensure that production flow was interrupted as little as possible, especially when the decision was made to convert all platemaking and printing plates to CTP, and to go from negative plates to positive plates. During this time a lot of monitoring, measuring and testing was done to ensure that the quality and end result is what was wanted and needed, on a continuous basis. Platemaking is an operation that is very crucial to the pressroom, because a faulty printing plate to the press is extremely costly and could result in press downtime, re-makes of the printing plate and possibly pre-press work to correct the problem/error. Platemaking is a craft on it's own as the platemaker not only deals with printing plates, and plating programs in it's manufacture, but also has to be aware of defects, inspect for errors such as imaging, coating defects, processing and check proofs for corrections as the majority of plates are now made by a computer to plate (Thermal) process such as Creo to name just one. The actual printing plate is generally aluminum, non-grained or multi-grained depending on the manufacturer, coated with a light sensitive coating that is either negative or positive. For higher quality plates and run length positive plates are highly recommended especially using a computer to plate technology. Printing plates have to be handled with great care, preferably using white cotton gloves to avoid finger prints on the printing plate which are very difficult to remove. Manual additions or deletions to positive plates are very difficult so extreme care by pre-press and the platemaker is critical.
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Printing defects come under Quality Control, and Expert has a very wide and broad experience of this, primarily having been employed in high end commercial printing plants. This covers every aspect and function of printing from sales all the way through to making sure that the finished project is delivered correctly and in a timely fashion. Expert as Plant Manager was heavily involved in all of this, (including the use of trade houses) and his staff were coached to be totally responsible for their own work and not to take chances if there were any queries or doubts of any kind. Printing defect can come in several different forms such as: paper, hickies, cut lines in paper stocks, image blemishes, planning errors, finishing and bindery errors (folding, wrong diecutting, collating), wrong paper grain errors for perfect binding and case binding, printed sheets sticking together, set-off, wrong colors (i.e. PMS colors), pre-press errors, imposition to name some. This is where quality control is so important not only in pre-press, platemaking, press, finishing and bindery but in the actual finished and completed product. Individuals should be trained to take random samples from anywhere in the finished product and inspect them to ensure the utmost in quality as the client (end user) would expect. The press crews need to make sure that counts to finishing are good, and ensure that only the best printed sheets are used and that all press sheet defects should be culled prior to going to finishing. This ideology also applies to sales, planning, pre-press, platemaking, press, ink mixing, bindery, shipping or any part of the entire operation as each department should consider the next department as "their customer" who expects only the best product and service from that previous department.
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Show Secondary and Basic Areas of Expertise | | |
| Year |
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Degree |
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Subject |
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Institution |
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1967
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Indenture of Apprenticeship
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Letterpress Machine Printing
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Charles Luff & Co. Ltd.
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1968
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Final Certificate
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Letterpress Machine Printing
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City & Guilds of London Institute
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1972
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Printing Production Management
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Printing Production Management
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City & Guilds of London Institute
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| Years |
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Employer |
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Title |
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2006 to 2007
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Transcontinetal Printing
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Plant Manager
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1989 to 2006
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Hemlock Printers
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Plant Manager/Supervisor/Production Manager
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1978 to 1989
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Hamer Graphics
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Working Manager
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1977 to 1978
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Western Book Manufacturing
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Pressman
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1975 to 1977
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Whitcoulls (New Zealand)
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Office Encoding Manager
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Associations/Societies
See Resume
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| Selected Consulting Examples: |
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Advising clients with technical process designs
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Project pre-planning
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Assisting others when they have press, ink or technical concerns
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Recent Client Requests:
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Expert for large copier contracts for consulting on Copier/Printer contract renewal and negotiations.
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Click the green button above to contact
Expert for a free initial screening call regarding your expert consulting needs.
Expert is available for consulting to corporate, legal and government clients.
Remember, your initial screening call to speak with
Expert is free.
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Click the green button above to contact
Expert for a free initial screening call regarding expert testimony,
litigation consulting and support, forensic services, or any related expert witness services.
A few litigation needs include product liability, personal injury, economic loss, intellectual property
(patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright), and insurance matters. Remember, your initial screening
call to speak with
Expert is free.
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| International Experience: |
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| Years |
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Summary |
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1975 to 1977
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New Zealand
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Printing, started as apressman promoted to Office Supervisor Encoding Dept.
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1962 to 1975
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England
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Printing
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1977 to
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Canada
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Printing, started as a pressman promoted to various positions including Supervisor, Production Manager and Plant Manager
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| Additional Skills and Services: |
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Supplier and Vendor Location and Selection Vendors used are generally of a local branch office e.g.Heidelberg, Hostmann-Steinberg, Sun Chemical, Unisource, USA Filter, paper suppliers, local air conditioning copmanies, local governments
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Other Skills and Services
He has been on a lot of courses e.g. supervisory, WHMIS, Drug and Alcohol etc., as well as atended trade shows and seminars. Went to Heidelberg Germany to beta site a management course for them in 1999.
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Education
