Offset Printing
How Can One Feel Good Without Alcohol?
Friday 28. March 2008 - MAN Rolands PraxisDialog 15 dealt with "Alcohol-free Offset Printing"
Printing without alcohol is “in”. This trend is strengthened by environmental legislation and ecological awareness. But how can I give my customers the quality they need without IPA? The 15th PraxisDialog that dealt with “Alcohol-free Offset Printing” provided the answers.
Damping solution conditioning, printing plate properties, selection of inking rollers and suitable press design – what effect does changing to alcohol-free or alcohol-reduced printing have on production speed and the choice of substrates and inks? The experts at PraxisDialog 15 provided over 100 guests with a complete examination of the IPA-free printing process.
More than just the “sober” facts
Companies representing all the value-adding stages in the print process gave talks during the day: Agfa Graphics, Technotrans, consumable materials dealer Hanns Eggen who helped the Leunisman printing company to get started with alcohol-free printing, and the Employers Liability Insurance Association of the Printing and Paper Processing Industry (ELIAPI). All aspects of IPA-free printing were explained to the guests, with every speaker reporting on the latest technical developments of their products and the effect this has on the printing process, starting in prepress with the influence of the printing plate and moving on to the importance of damping solution conditioning, then a real-life report from a printing company. A special aspect was the influence legislation has on the general conditions for IPA-free printing. MAN Roland explained the possibilities press technology offers for environment-friendly print production. A practical demonstration on a ten-color ROLAND 700 HiPrint proved the performance capabilities of alcohol-free printing.
Profound environmental know-how
Resource-conserving production focused on the environment and sustainability is becoming ever more important. This was made very clear by the speakers Jörg Dreyer (Agfa Graphics), Eike Moes (Technotrans), Thomas Hambrock (Hanns Eggen), Dr.-Ing. Bernhard Küter and the ELIAPI, along with Rainer Gebhardt and Felix Ehrtmann (MAN Roland).