Windmill Registration Trouble

On larger sheets of paper, I’m having trouble getting the far end of the sheet to go behind the guide pin. Hopefully my picture can explain the frustration I’m going through. (printing with guides)

Does anybody have a remedy for this? Any idea of what may be happening?

I’ve observed the process carefully at a slow speed and can’t figure out why this is happening. My best guess is that the grippers are to close to the tympan and is forcing the opposite end of the sheet to tilt up.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

image: Paper missing guide pin

Paper missing guide pin

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Is that lettra or some other thick paper?
1. You can down curl the paper on the end nearest the pin.
2. Bend the pin out and away from the tympan.
3. Use longer paper so that you can use a longer guide pin and not hit your base.
4. Use a piece of broom for a guide pin instead of the metal one, so you don’t smash your base.
5. Slide your guide to the right…so it is closer to the middle of the sheet, and/or run with 3 guides.
6. Make sure your side guide is all the way to the far right…even if you have to move your form over to the left.
7. How much packing are you using?
8. Don’t use a base, use a traditional cut so you don’t have to worry about smashing your base, or use a smaller base so you can use a longer guide pin.
9. Lock your base up higher in the chase to give you more room for longer pins.

Slightly bend your paper so there is a crown in the middle or move the brass guide to the left and print horizontally instead of vertically.

Just bend the paper before you print it to make sure that corner of the page naturally sits down on the top sheet.

Make sure your left feed standard is set to the correct position, sometimes it wanders in.

I have found that if you cut a piece of mylar and use two sided tape to attach it two the lay gauge you can easily overcome this issue. This is similar to using Lay pins, but you wont damage the base or your stock.

This also works well for envelopes.

-L

elationpress.com

Here is a photo of what I mean. I also use a piece of tape as it makes it easier to get off due to the two sided tape having a tendency to stick too well to the lay gauge.

image: photo.JPG

photo.JPG

If you have the room to use the mylar trick, I would just use a larger pin (65 or 75mm or whatever, whichever is the big one) and cut the packing away where the pin falls under your topsheet. The pin won’t damage your base this way.

@modernman

How do you keep the pin from damaging the stock if it lands in the live area? Are you suggesting that cutting away the packing will prevent this? If so, I must have done something wrong in the past as I could never eliminate that. I would have a dent in the stock.

Wow, thanks so much everybody. Some great suggestions here!

@Girl with a kluge - So many good ideas! I should have no problem remedying my trouble with one of these.

@phasetwo:

I think I’m going to try this trick first, seems like it’ll work really well! Curious though, why use the double sided tape? Why not just stick the mylar directly to the side of the gauge?

You are welcome!

I started using this for envelopes.

However, I do a lot of jobs that are rectangular and long which are multi-color runs. I have found that the stock curls progressively with each color, and I got tired of trying to bend the stock curl to conform with large jobs. This fixed that issue nicely.

Hope it works for you…

Please let us know if you solve the problem.

-L

elationpress.com

Phasetwo,

Yes, cutting simply cutting away the packing under the pin allows you to run stock with guides without damage.

So long as in the section of your forme where the pin rests has no packing whatsoever save a topsheet, you should have about 0.08” (press undercut + difference of plate height to type height) of wiggle room for stock and guide, which is plenty for anything up to 110# and workable sometimes for 220# 2-ply stuff.

I cut a section out of my packing about a half inch all around the guide while doing makeready. I usually take one sheet to the platen before any packing has been put down, manually move the guides up fully and mark on the sheet where the pin sits, cut that section out of the sheet with scissors and then use that as a template for all pieces of makeready.

Using this method we’ve printed 110# Lettra at final trim size many times with guides without damaging the stock. You do need a bit of a margin in between the print area and the guide, though; if the guide is run very close to plate area on the base it will always ding it a bit,

Check the left side standard on the feed table, as it may not be in the right position. it has two different positions…one for brass guides and the other for nickle guides.

If you are not overpacked ,which i suspect you are , i would just bend the board a wee bit just to keep it on the platen , ,really you want to lay a sheet on a flat surface and bend it to suit making it flat ,if it sits flatter on a flat surface after bending it should run unless you are over packed , remember that everything on the platen surface including the job should be a comfy fit in the packing guage ,anything over that may be troublesome .