Digital Dish: June 2019

Each Digital Dish features a new nugget to chew on and fuel your digital cravings. This month's edition provides tips to execute a successful paper trial on your new digital press, starting with obtaining trial rolls to linearizing the press.

1. Selecting Trial Papers

Paper trials, although timely, are a necessary step when purchasing a new digital press. Since it uses press time to set up and execute a proper paper trial, consider trialing only one or two paper options. When choosing a trial paper, it's important to understand the needs of your end-use customers and select a paper that will be used most often and result in quality print jobs that meet the targets of their business. Consider Accent Opaque Digital - a versatile portfolio of papers, including treated rolls for high-speed inkjet printing.

2. Understanding Trial Policies

Upon selecting the paper(s) to trial, contact your local merchant or paper sales representative to discuss their trial rolls policy. Although most manufacturers have a trial policy and are cooperative, they may differ on the process to obtain the rolls in-house. Even though some manufacturers require paper minimums to purchase stock, which can present an issue to printers, most do stock certain papers in smaller quantities to purchase for trials. Work with your merchant or paper rep to understand what is available to help grow your business.

3. Profiling and Linearization

Depending on the paper(s) selected, some Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) produce paper profiles that can be loaded directly to your inkjet press. While this helps minimize the trial time up to 2-3 hours, the press must still be linearized to align the print heads with the help of the inkjet press technician, as each press differs slightly. It's important to work with the paper manufacturer and merchant to ensure both are present during the trial to help as needed. Once the trial and prints are completed, the print sales team can show these to customers to move them toward new digital business.

Tune Into Episode 3!

Episode 3 of our new digital printing video series, Master Class, is now available. Learn more about the difference between paper Profiling and press Linearization, the challenges associated with each, and why they are crucial to the success of your print projects.

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