Oosterhout, March 2012  - Q.I. Press Controls has succeeded to add a new function to its IDS system. That will make the printer’s job easier still, and the heatset and coldset web-offset presses even more effective. It is the new IDS facility that makes web-offset printing facilities more efficient, realising stronger levels of waste control. This has by now been proven in practice on a number of production presses.

As a standard, IDS analyses the printed paper web for existing functions, by scanning the entire width of the web. After comparing this to the appointed ideal image (in the rip or the approved and saved print), IDS guides the inking to the ideal value. That function has not changed. Only the software, the analysis algorithms, has expanded. The hardware has not changed either. Still, added value for printers has risen considerably thanks to laboursaving, substantial risk avoidance, a reduction of waste and a reduction of downtime.
• Automated fountain solution control: as a standard, IDS fully automatically controls and corrects all printing colours by means of the ink fountains on the web-offset presses. The final missing piece was the dampening supply-control in the printing towers. That may at times fluctuate, for instance when the web-offset press is warming up. Q.I. Press Controls has now managed to distil conclusions for dampening supply from eventual colour-hue changes the printed colour space. After all, colour space monitoring also compares the relation to unprinted paper white. In other words: whatever highly experienced printers identify on a print in terms of dampening-supply – and maybe even better when looking through a magnifying glass – is now fully automatically identified and adjusted by IDS, and all at the same speed at which colours are adjusted. So less wories about the control of the two-component offset process, ink and foundation solution control. Both are now automatically restrained by IDS.

This options in IDS has a cycle of approximately 100 prints and can be implemented in Q.I. Press Controls’ existing IDS/IQM systems.
• Q.I. Press Controls recognises the potential for these IDS facilities on its existing market, where quality requirements for printed matter on a shrinking market are increasing excessively. One thing becomes increasingly clear in the experience of printers and their clients: ‘failures are a big no-no’. Given the fact that in, for instance, Japan self-registering and self-detection quality inspection systems for web-offset presses are rule rather than exception, Q.I. Press Controls feels it recognizes a new perspective for IDS.
• Want to see for yourself? You can, after having made an appointment with Q.I. Press Controls and with the consent of the users in question.

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