Printing plates

["Geoff Hart (by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>)" <ght -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Laurence Burrows is <<...working with a client on a directory
publication. It's to be bound on trimmed A4 after printing as 16
page signatures. Black only.  It contains between 0 and 2 b&w
photographic images per page, and most of the type is set 8/9.5 (very
dry specification stuff). Initial print run is 3000 copies on 80gsm
semi gloss stock.>>

Paper plates have worked well for me with print runs of ca. 500, and
were substantially cheaper than metal up to about (if memory serves)
1000 impressions. The output can degrade in quality quite rapidly
after 500 copies, so you'll have to compare the cost (say) of six
sets of paper plates (with the accompanying sixfold increase in the
risk of incorrectly stripped pages on the signatures made from each
new set of plates) vs. a single set of metal plates. The photo
quality will be decidedly inferior to what you can get with metal
even if there have been dramatic improvements in the technology over
the past few years. I'm not familiar with 16-page signatures, as we
used a maximum of 4 pages with paper; however, that may have been our
local printer's limit rather a limit with the technology.
Nonetheless, paper is a much weaker medium than metal or plastic, so
I suspect 16-page signatures will be relatively fragile.

I have no experience with plastic plates, so I can't comment from
experience on their quality. I suspect the halftone quality will be
less than with metal. (Plastic plates are still a relatively young
technology.) Check with your printer to see what the claimed number
of impressions will be, and do the same cost (and risk) comparison
versus metal plates that I proposed for paper plates. If you're
unsure, insist on some form of quality guarantee (e.g., do a press
proof before you start the final print run); ideally, ask to be
present during the printing of someone else's job so you can see how
well the plastic plates hold lines and halftones. If you like what
you see, you could then risk your own job on that technology.

--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"By God, for a moment there it all made sense!"--Gahan Wilson

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