Offset Printing
Mitsubishi Continues to Revolutionize Color Control
Friday 11. September 2009 - Recent developments in Mitsubishi printing technology have pushed the envelope further in terms of automating tasks that previously required a press operator to evaluate and adjust variables variables such as color.
At Print ’09, Mitsubishi Lithographic Presses will demonstrate Diamond Color Navigator, the 2009 InterTech Technology Award-winning system that enables operators to automatically adjust color both before and during printing by using their own intuitive color sense rather than attempting to interpret the CMYK balance necessary to achieve a desired color match.
“Until the introduction of Diamond Color Navigator, accurate color adjustments relied on operators’ skill at judging color manipulations required to match a proof or customer preference,” said Marke Baker, president of Mitsubishi Lithographic Presses. “Now operators can color balance an entire image or sections of the image or alter ink densities without the need for frequent trial and error by way of manual ink key adjustments.”
Diamond Color Navigator simplifies the formerly skill-intensive fine-tuning of colors on press by automatically correcting all necessary ink key openings using a touch screen color wheel based on an operator’s visual sense of color. Operators also can control registration, rotation speeds for the ink and water rollers and ink ductor on/off function using Diamond Color Navigator, eliminating the need to perform these basic press functions at the remote console.
Less experienced or unskilled operators are able to isolate very specific areas of the image that need adjusting and then select a specific shade from the color wheel, instead of guessing which percentages of process colors will achieve the desired shade. The system then simultaneously moves all the appropriate keys on each printing unit to yield the selected color.
Diamond Color Navigator permits real-time proofing by the operator and customer of the adjusted image. One of the system’s monitors immediately shows the result of the adjustment before the actual changes take place in the ink fountains on the press.
“The experiences of Diamond Color Navigator users have demonstrated that fewer ink key moves, fewer pulls, less materials waste and greater color accuracy are some of the key benefits printers may realize with this system,” Baker said.
Image-scanning spectrophotometer
As part of the live print demonstrations in the Mitsubishi booth, press demonstrators will control color utilizing the Mitsubishi Color Control System V (MCCS-V) image-scanning spectrophotometer. The MCCS-V maximizes reproduction quality and color stability by measuring the entire print image. It records all image data for a print sheet in a single operation.
The MCCS-V scans an entire pull sheet or proof by scanning the image only, color bar only or combination of the two. The sheet is measured in both horizontal and vertical directions. The MCCS-V has spectrophotometry and densitometry capabilities; it looks at the L.a.b. characteristics of color, as well as the reflective density.
Necessary information is set automatically according to the printing job setting by the Mitsubishi PressLink and ColorLink systems. The optimum control value of the printing press to a preset target color is displayed on the touch monitor, fed back and controlled in the printing press as required.
The MCCS-V can read OK sheets from previous jobs to accelerate the setups of reruns. Operators can scan multiple-up sheets to find the best-looking image on the sheet. The color data from this portion of the sheet becomes the optimum control value to which the entire sheet is run.
Mitsubishi will demonstrate Diamond Color Navigator and the Mitsubishi Color Control System V connected to a six-color Diamond V3000LX wide stock range press in booth #1146 at Print ’09, September 11-16 at McCormick Place in Chicago.