Digital Dish: February 2019

Each dish features a new nugget to chew on and fuel your digital cravings. This month's edition focuses on ink usage during High Speed Inkjet Printing and provides steps to take to reduce this amount by printing on a treated sheet versus a non-treated sheet.

1. Understand the Project

When comparing a treated vs. non-treated sheet, it's important to consider what is being printed. Monochrome printing and books typically require less ink and are more forgiving than a direct mail piece or marketing print collateral with heavy ink coverage. No matter the project, there is always an opportunity to reduce ink usage on a treated sheet because the treatment helps to wick away the high water content and leaves the ink on the surface.

2. Experiment with Ink

The end customer will ultimately determine the amount of ink reduction that is acceptable. To make this decision, the customer should review test pages of both treated and untreated paper. First, load all the ink possible on the untreated paper to see if it is acceptable to the customer. Next, reduce the ink on the treated paper to match that of the untreated print. A best practice is to run two or three reduction levels on the treated sheet to have multiple options to show the customer.

3. Calculate the Savings

After deciding which reduction level on the treated sheet is acceptable, it's time to determine the amount of ink savings. In some cases, ink usage has reduced as much as 30% depending on the end print. While the price of a treated sheet is slightly higher than that of a non-treated sheet, the value of ink savings helps offset any increase in paper costs.

Digital Printing Video Series

Questions about the world of digital printing? To help navigate the shift from analog to digital, I'm pleased to announce the creation of the Master Class video series, brought to you by me, Sylvamo's Digital Expert. Episode 1 launches soon! Learn more in the teaser here.

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If you have a topic you are hungry to learn more about, please email us at DYK@sylvamo.com!