When choosing a printing press, you should distinguish between technological printing problems and mechanical problems of the press itself.

What does the person who comes to inspect a printing press look like? Typically, it is a business owner who has brought along a printer whom he considers to be an expert in the knowledge of offset printing. After all, it’s his machine to work on, let him choose.

The printer arrives with a smart look 🙂 and the classic FOGRA scale that he has become accustomed to over the years. In fact, this scale is designed to monitor the printing process. And it will show the quality of the process setting in a particular print shop. But it will tell you very little about the state of the sheetfed system.

Today we are going to talk about technological problems, as a result of which

• Image sharpness and saturation decreases;
• Ink dries worse and takes longer to dry;
• Deformation of paper (stretching or, on the contrary, compression);
• Stains or shadows are applied to areas of the paper where there should be no ink;
• A number of other defects that occur due to incorrect selection of inks, dampening, as well as due to climatic conditions in the printing house.
• This is what the printer will be able to see on his scale. But to understand the condition of your machine, you should not pay attention to these parameters. Your print room will have completely different conditions.It also happens that the above defects are not a direct consequence of poor quality of the equipment or mistakes of the printers, but often a consequence of defects in the printing technology itself.It is much more useful to carry out a special FACTORY test, which will show the real condition of the sheet conveying system, including the turning device. But we will talk about this later.