Over the coming weeks I will be writing a great deal about my last two days in Chicago. Kevin Kocher of MacDermid Printing Solutions (offset blanket manufacturer) invited me to a press trial of their new Stabil-X blanket. So, right about now if I was one of my readers I would be thinking how exciting can an off-set blanket be? In a word this blanket is cool. It truly is the first revolutionary technology change in blankets in decades. In short this blanket is a patented combination of a polymer backing (instead of fabric) with Kevlar fibers running through it as well as synthetic fibers to replace the nitrile rubber and cotton.
We took a great deal of measurements during this trial, and while I have not had time to fully review the data I can tell you that this blanket printed better. Better being lower dot gain at the same density levels as conventional blankets, a smoother shaped TVI curve than traditional blankets, and most importantly less density and dot gain variation in sequential pulls.
Over the coming weeks I will be including both numeric and graphical results of this test, showing how we utilized ColorMetrix to confirm the visual results with objective factual data.
Jim,
Thanks for publishing your results and bringing this new technology to my attention. As you know, I’m currently interested in minimizing the density and dot gain variation in sequetntial pulls for a project. Could you post the data you collected from this test, as well as any analysis you’ve done to show how much the short-term density and dot-gain variation was diminished with the new blanket?
Thanks,
Ed
Jim,
Thanks for publishing your results and bringing this new technology to my attention. As you know, I’m currently interested in minimizing the density and dot gain variation in sequetntial pulls for a project. Could you post the data you collected from this test, as well as any analysis you’ve done to show how much the short-term density and dot-gain variation was diminished with the new blanket?
Thanks,
Ed