Consumables-Ink - Conventional Offset

by Chris Bauer Managing Editor The press manufacturers’ “big iron” may have taken up mammoth amounts of floor space and received the lion’s share of headlines at PRINT 05 & CONVERTING 05, but not to be forgotten are the booths often found on the fringe of the McCormick Center’s halls. Here, there was plenty of news to be found from paper, ink and other consumables providers. For example, while donning white lab coats, executives from International Paper announced that its entire range of uncoated freesheet papers for imaging, commercial printing, envelopes and forms would be improved to a new standard of whiteness and

You say your shop wants to improve reproduction quality to land more high-end work, but you're not sure you can afford it? Well, the people at Beechmont Press, a mid-sized, Louisville, KY-based printer, say you probably can't afford not to. After making a firm commitment to quality improvement, Beechmont put its production methods and materials under the microscope, and managed, quite profitably, to capture its own high-end slice of the market. Beginning with the obvious, Beechmont management focused on equipment. They installed a five-color, 40˝ Speedmaster, and they gave their conventional prepress an electronic makeover. But along with high-performance equipment purchases, they developed a simple theory:

There's more to this critical printing ingredient than what comes in the can—tons of trust, good communication, lots of technical support, a competitive price and, of course, quality. BY CHERYL A. ADAMS Ink isn't just ink. One size doesn't fit all. Otherwise, there wouldn't be thousands of formulations—each with its own set of requirements, which may vary depending on the type of press, printing process, product and substrate used, as well as the product's end use and the environment in which it will be used. With so many applications and different ink formulations, how does a printer know which ink to buy? Which is