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Undocumented Printing Error?
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57 posts in this topic

33 minutes ago, Kevin76 said:

Red Plate cracked

No dinner tonight then. 

31 minutes ago, Kevin76 said:

 

Needs a new P.1 Black Plate  

Yes. Or a P.2 maybe. 

28 minutes ago, Kevin76 said:

Black is running too light, either the ink fountain is running low on black or the press operator needs to adjust the ink keys to put more black on the paper.  

That's it, blame the press operator. Always the press operator....

27 minutes ago, Kevin76 said:

Blanket smash or needs a new cyan plate  

Blanket smash?

Hulk smash! 

Only kidding Kevin. Not being a printer I had to Google every explanation you see. But thanks :)

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3 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

No dinner tonight then. 

Yes. Or a P.2 maybe. 

That's it, blame the press operator. Always the press operator....

Blanket smash?

Hulk smash! 

Only kidding Kevin. Not being a printer I had to Google every explanation you see. But thanks :)

20 years of offset web printing :)  

 

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6 hours ago, Kevin76 said:
On 2/26/2020 at 11:00 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

182ne.thumb.jpg.28d9db2ac39805599ce92f0ac77f048a.jpg

182pe1f.thumb.jpg.59db91a8fb270d635454967c4a93cb40.jpg

!

Black is running too light, either the ink fountain is running low on black or the press operator needs to adjust the ink keys to put more black on the paper. 

How does black factor in to the missing exclamation point?

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4 minutes ago, Foley said:

How does black factor in to the missing exclamation point?

I don't know, do I look like a f:censored:in press operator?

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Look again, there’s a corner piece of the blue cyan plate not printing,  upper right corner above the Marvel masthead strip.

similar issue to the circular lighter area on a different cover.  I don’t know blanket smash, but in all these cases, the presses were stopped plates fixed and more copies printed.  Pretty silly stop the presses for though.

 

also I don’t get what you meant about the missing lines in the UPC.  That doesn’t look consistent with a plate issue.  More like a stripping omission, same as the Devil Dinosaur missing red. No?

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3 hours ago, Aman619 said:

Look again, there’s a corner piece of the blue cyan plate not printing,  upper right corner above the Marvel masthead strip.

similar issue to the circular lighter area on a different cover.  I don’t know blanket smash, but in all these cases, the presses were stopped plates fixed and more copies printed.  Pretty silly stop the presses for though.

 

also I don’t get what you meant about the missing lines in the UPC.  That doesn’t look consistent with a plate issue.  More like a stripping omission, same as the Devil Dinosaur missing red. No?

It's called quality 

A blanket is a sheet of rubber wrapped around the cylinder so the image gets printed onto the sheet of paper, a cracked plate can cause the rubber to rip or put a hole in it. The missing rubber will cause a spot of missing color on the paper. 

It's possible the missing lines on the UPC was done in prepress.  No one can be a 100% certain on it since I wasn't there when it was caught.  It's either a mistake in prepress, a blanket smash or a cracked plate.  It's one of those 3.  

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9 minutes ago, Kevin76 said:

It's called quality 

A blanket is a sheet of rubber wrapped around the cylinder so the image gets printed onto the sheet of paper, a cracked plate can cause the rubber to rip or put a hole in it. The missing rubber will cause a spot of missing color on the paper. 

It's possible the missing lines on the UPC was done in prepress.  No one can be a 100% certain on it since I wasn't there when it was caught.  It's either a mistake in prepress, a blanket smash or a cracked plate.  It's one of those 3.  

Got it.  Iv3 had a lot of printing done and been on press, but never worked at a printers.  So I don’t know all the terminology. A blanket is a rubber ink transferring “plate”, but not a metal plate.  Because this is cheap printing...  So, being a rubber thing, the mountains that transfer the ink are prone to chipping loose... yes? 

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Wait, as a followup... these are the covers we are seeing errors on.  Not the newsprint.  Arent the covers printed to higher quality (and dot screen, 100?  150? using metal plates?  Pieces wouldn’t chip off  Metal plates would they? Meaning that these errors were sloppy stripping.

some guys like that!

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51 minutes ago, Aman619 said:

Wait, as a followup... these are the covers we are seeing errors on.  Not the newsprint.  Arent the covers printed to higher quality (and dot screen, 100?  150? using metal plates?  Pieces wouldn’t chip off  Metal plates would they? Meaning that these errors were sloppy stripping.

some guys like that!

Nobody likes a sloppy stripper. 

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3 hours ago, Kevin76 said:

You definitely sound like one haha

True, true.

Jesting aside, take a peak at this journal post / thread if you get bored. See if you can bring any expert printer opinion to the whys and wherefores...

 

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5 hours ago, Aman619 said:

Got it.  Iv3 had a lot of printing done and been on press, but never worked at a printers.  So I don’t know all the terminology. A blanket is a rubber ink transferring “plate”, but not a metal plate.  Because this is cheap printing...  So, being a rubber thing, the mountains that transfer the ink are prone to chipping loose... yes? 

You could almost say that it's almost like a plate.  The blanket is usually blue. The front of the blanket that touches the paper is all rubber, with a canvas like back for added strength so it doesn't fly off the press as it's running.  As the press is running, you're dealing with 3 things.  Ink, Water and Paper.  As the press has been running awhile, it does pick up paper dust that clings to the blanket and ink. This is what causes "hickeys" on the image. They look like little "white jagged circles"  

"Mountains that transfer the ink are prone to chipping loose"?  

Gonna try and break this down since I have an idea what you mean. 

First you have an ink fountain or reservoir if you wanna call it that.  Each fountain has an ink blade in it that controls how much ink goes onto the ink ball, which then the ink transfers to a metering roller, then transfers to rubber ink transfer rollers, then to the plate and then to the blanket and then onto the paper. As far as prone to chipping loose. Yes, if the rubber transfer rollers gets too hot, usually caused by a bad roller setting (pressure needs to be set to each roller it touches, too tight, it breaks apart, too lose, ink won't transfer)  The pieces of rubber can fly off and blow out the web while it's running and cause a big mess of paper wrap ups and downtime.  

Edited by Kevin76
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2 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

True, true.

Jesting aside, take a peak at this journal post / thread if you get bored. See if you can bring any expert printer opinion to the whys and wherefores...

 

That could be what Marvel at the time ordered changes to. it's just a matter of a black plate change.  A printer isn't going to make changes like that at free will.  Maybe they liked a bolder price sticker after they saw samples or vise versa.  it's not a print error.  

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Thanks for the explanations.  I’ve seen the soft plates you’re talking about.  As collectibles at shows...  you quoted my line about “mountains”. I think you see what I meant.  Printing is done by transferring ink to plates but only in the spots you want the ink to appear, so plates are etched by eating away areas leav8ng high points (mountains) ... only these areas receive ink.  They pass the ink to the sheets of paper... over and over again.  And are prone to small failures.

same basic process as a rubber hand stamp. If you apply the ink carefully, with just the right amount of pressure, and press it onto the carefully, you get a perfect image.  Magazine printing is the same basic principal, Only scaled up a thousandfold. 

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1 hour ago, Kevin76 said:

That could be what Marvel at the time ordered changes to. it's just a matter of a black plate change.  A printer isn't going to make changes like that at free will.  Maybe they liked a bolder price sticker after they saw samples or vise versa.  it's not a print error.  

Marwood has been collecting these overseas variants for years and discovered all the font changes etc.  and has demonstrated that overseas (British) Marvels were in fact printed here in the states, just before or just after the American copies...

so I think what he’s asking here is while Marvel must have ordered the plate changes here, WHY change the font? From a printing standpoint, both say 10c.  Black on white bkgnd.  There’s no need to make any change to the cover plates here (as they had to do when the 10c was in the artwork,or a color area of the cover —- yet they did.  Unless Marvel and the printer wanted an easy way to tell the editions apart for shipping without opening them up to look at the inside front covers where a line crediting the overseas licensor was added?  Os, determining from the cover price font may have been the solution to make it easier? 

Edited by Aman619
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13 minutes ago, Aman619 said:
2 hours ago, Kevin76 said:

That could be what Marvel at the time ordered changes to. it's just a matter of a black plate change.  A printer isn't going to make changes like that at free will.  Maybe they liked a bolder price sticker after they saw samples or vise versa.  it's not a print error.  

Marwood has been collecting these overseas variants for years and discovered all the font changes etc.  and has demonstrated that overseas (British) Marvels were in fact printed here in the states, just before or just after the American copies...

so I think what he’s asking here is while Marvel must have ordered the plate changes here, WHY change the font? From a printing standpoint, both say 10c.  Black on white bkgnd.  There’s no need to make any change to the cover plates here (as they had to do when the 10c was in the artwork,or a color area of the cover —- yet they did.  Unless Marvel and the printer wanted an easy way to tell the editions apart for shipping without opening them up to look at the inside front covers where a line crediting the overseas licensor was added?  Os, determining from the cover price font may have been the solution to make it easier? 

Why...why....WHY!

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Delilah :)

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