On Press Again

I was at a paperboard company last week, on press to approve a box re-run for a client. It was especially critical because the first run had been rejected due to gross color variation. Why was it rejected? Because someone at the printing company miss-handled the WIP and shipped set-up material to the client. (This printer uses "set-up" material to get their die-cutter in registration.) When the item went into production, the packaging looked terrible and the entire job was returned to the printer for credit. 

While the job itself was not especially challenging, there were some things working against us from the start. There was a warm red and two special blacks used on these three items. The warm red on the proof was a build using 100% process M & Y.

1. The tone of the warm red was off giving the proof a blue cast.

2. The special blacks were not well-defined by the client. The way they were separated was not the way I would have done it, but it was already on-press.

3. Two of the items were running on different presses at the same time. 

4. The paperboard stock on press was not from the same mill as the proof. In this case the surface texture was way different. 

I decided that as a strategy we would get one up and running first on the older press and then match the second item to it on the newer, better press. I had to determine that we were not going to run a "special" magenta. Running special colors in the process stations can create as many problems as it solves. This practice is not that uncommon such as swapping out cyan for pro-blue, but when playing in the reds this can throw off the whole balance of the job. Plus; there were some process elements on this job that would be affected.

It took seven pulls to get it acceptable once we determined that the red wasn't going to get any better and the mottling wasn't going away on the black due to stock. On the other press, we got the color into the OK zone on the second pull. The third item was a quick changeover with a reset of the ink densities. 

If you are a printer, make sure you have a system set up that prevents shipping sub-quality material to your customer. When I was at CCL Label many years ago, one of our new CS agents sent labels they literally took out of a dumpster to the buyer at Clairol. The next day we almost lost that account. If you can't avoid setting up on the actual job, then quarantine it or have a quality agent approve the material. This stuff might seem like 101 to you, but the folks on the line may not have their head in the game.

On the artwork side, I am not 100% clear that the design firm, the client and the printer were in alignment as to how these jobs were going to print. Having this alignment would be beneficial to everyone in order to manage expectations. 

Fortunately, our client was happy with the job and hopefully the printer will remember this experence on future runs. . .    Have you ever had similar issues?