One of Thoro’s customers, a well respected, large medical device manufacturer, was producing new packaging for their product line. They came to Thoro for a press check to ensure that they were able to get the desired color and quality results on paper, and to set the printing standard for all other packaging using these same graphics.
Before coming to Thoro, they had a press check for the same artwork on a different structure at another carton manufacturer. The previous press check, at the other shop, used UV inks and coatings. The customer brought the approved sheet from the press run with UV inks to Thoro to match the results during our press check, which was to be run with conventional inks and coatings.
Our press crew finished their make-ready, had their inks at standard densities and had the customer come out to the press to review the results. The customer compared the press sheet done on UV inks and found one obvious color variation. The graphics contained a duotone image that used a golden yellow and black ink. There was a big difference between the strength of the golden yellow on the UV sheet and the results that we were getting with conventional inks. When we took density readings of the UV sheet, Thoro’s pressmen determined that the other shop had run the golden yellow ink very heavy, outside of standard densities for the ink. Although Thoro was also able to push our ink, we felt that doing so would make it hard to match on future print runs and would be more prone to color variation because the ink and water balance is harder to standardize when pushing your inks out of their range.
We reviewed this information with the customer and recommended that we increase the color of the golden yellow in the artwork files to match the results achieved by pushing the UV ink. This would allow us to run our inks at their proper density, have less color variation, better repeatability and ultimately better quality. The customer agreed. The art changes were made to the files immediately, a new golden yellow plate was output and we went back on press. We were able to achieve the desired result and keep control of our inks to ensure a color match on future runs for the customer.
The customer decided that they will come to Thoro first, for their bench-mark, initial press checks; so that we can make sound recommendations and adjustments on press or to artwork files if necessary. Thoro is now setting the standard for their artwork that any other packaging printers will need to match, going forward.
