Good press performance starts with staying within specifications

If you want to get the best performance and longest life from your press, regular maintenance is key. Let’s start with the ink roller train. Clean and treat your rollers from surface to end with a proper roller wash. Condition your rollers daily to prevent contaminants from getting into the ink rollers, which will cause premature breakdown or shrinking of the rubber. Make sure your ink rollers are adjusted to manufacturer’s specs to ensure proper transfer of ink and prevent uneven wear. Bearings should be greased with a high-temperature grease for bearings—this will prevent unnecessary wear of the ink roller hangers.

Dampening system: clean and treat your roller from surface to end with a proper roller wash and condition your rollers daily to prevent contamination of the dampening rubber rollers with calcium, for instance. Grease bearings with a high-temperature grease; this will prevent unnecessary wear of the dampening bearings. Clean your dampening seals daily by removing them from your press before cleaning to prevent unnecessary friction between seal and roller from causing the seal to break down too soon.

Plate cylinders: the surface of the plate cylinder, including the bearers should be cleaned daily to ensure proper printing pressure between plate cylinder to blanket cylinder. Bump marks on print could be a cause of this lack of maintenance. Oil plate clamps according to manufacturer’s spec to maximize plate adjustment flexibilities.

Blankets: to ensure proper printing length and quality of dot reproduction, make sure the blanket is packed to manufacturer’s specs. If the blanket is not torqued to a proper setting, registration could be affected—for example, PU2 could move in register from PU1. If the blanket is over-packed, “picture framing” on the back steel will occur. Cleaning the blanket wash-up system weekly ensures proper quality of wash and durability of the blanket, which will make a more reliable system.

Back steel: make sure the back steel is cleaned daily by hand to remove contaminants such as ink calcium or lime (both from the fountain solution), paper debris such as carbon from NCR paper, glue from adhesive backing, or even lint or clay from bond or coated stock. Lubricate your cylinder according to the manufacturer’s specs to ensure proper gripper-opening timing. which will prevent dropped sheets or creasing.

Feeder: change the feeder suckers regularly, every million impressions, to maximize productivity, ease operation and reduce down time due to knock-offs, sheet-to-sheet misregistration or creasing.

Delivery: most importantly, simply keep it clean. Clean and lubricate your delivery chains to ensure longevity of the chain. You may notice sheets marking at the lead edge due to the stretching of the chains. If your machine shuts off for no seen reason, you probably have a stretched delivery chain, which causes the sheet to hit sensors at higher speeds.

gear lubrication: hand-grease or centrally lubricate gears to eliminate friction and wear of gears, which may cause registration issues, toning , reduced productivity and a large service bill at the end of the month

Powder spray system: are you seeing set-off, even though your spray is at full? Make sure you stir the spray powder daily to loosen particles that may have clumped due to moisture. Also blow out spray line to clear passage of obstruction.

Following these tips regularly will keep downtime to a minimum, extend the life of your equipment and keep it operating at maximum productivity.