vandercook registration without gripper
Hey guys,
My customer recently requested additional copies of the prints I am making, and I don’t have enough time to order more paper for the job. I do, theoretically, have enough paper to complete the job, with the additional prints, but would have to do away with the extra length on each piece that I reserve for feeding into the grippers and clearing the form (that I cut off after printing the job). Instead of cutting each mother sheet into 4’s, I’m going to have to divide into small sixths, in other words. In essence, my blank stock will need to be cut to final size before printing, and the design is such that elements will be printed very close to all edges of the finished piece. So, tight foolproof registration will be vitally important. I have had an intern accidentally come to print with pre-cut stock, forgetting about the grippers, and we rigged up a double-sided tape registration onto the tympan. The tape frequently either tore her cards, or weren’t sticky enough to hold them in place while printing, though, and she had MANY unusable pieces at the end of the day. Any suggestions on alternative ways of holding and registering paper directly onto the cylinder without use of the grippers? I’m sure someone has touched on this already, but different searches are turning up no helpful results for me. I need a technique that will not tear or lose grip on the paper, and that will hold the paper reliably in a fixed position and register correctly for at least two color runs. Thanks!
You could mount the sheets onto inexpensive paper which then could be registered in the normal way. Use a removable masking tape. If you want assurance of proper placement, print guide lines (a register corner and sideline) on the base sheets so you can get good alignment of the sheets on the base sheets. These sheets could be re-used many times for various other work.
Hmm. Good idea. But if i’m going to print guidelines onto the sacrificial undersheet, I might as well print guidelines onto the tympan and just mount each sheet onto it directly. Just seems so time consuming! And the text and imagery are quite literally 1/8” from all edges of the paper. Not much room to attach tape on top, and double sided tape under would cause some impression issues. Must be another way??? I was wondering about spraying some low tack adhesive onto the tympan. Has anyone tried this?
It’s less time consuming to mount and demount all the sheets at once, than it is to mount each sheet each time you print a color.
Then you’re mounting each sheet 2 times+ (depending upon how many runs); that’s twice the mounting work.
If you mount to a base sheet, you mount once; print; demount.
-Mark
I have a Vandercook 1 (no grippers at all) and the best and easiest solution I found was a strip of manilla folder about 1” wide folded over lengthwise and taped onto the cylinder parallel to the axis of rotation. The tape holds the fold closed as well as attaching it to the cylinder. And the fold is tight enough to hold a sheet during the impression.
A pencil mark on the provides a side registration. Registration in the other dimension was achieved with small adjustments of the form placement with register quions. The whole form was locked up in a 8x12 C&P chase that was itself locked up to the bed of the press.
If necessary the tail of the sheet can be taped to the tympan with a removable tape, though I found that carefully guiding the paper with a hand worked just as well.
Register quoins are small quoins with a screw mounted disk that you can use in opposed pairs to move a whole form by tiny amounts.
thanks for the ideas everyone!