Plate technique for iron hand press v. flatbed cylinder press

j archibald
on 4 May 24 (07:57)
Updated 4 May 24 (08:00)

We have had an experience with a page proof pulled on the iron hand press that turned out not to have the same results on our flatbed cylinder press. As some printers may be on a fixed budget, it’s a difference worth sharing.

In our replica document production, we clipped plates for the iron hand press as close to the edges of the type area as possible. This usually was about 1/4”-1/8” of foot. Why do this? By leaving the entire plate on the bed, the edges of the plates tended to pick up some ink from the rollers. This resulted in a messy appearance on our proofs, particularly at the edges at the top of the pages.

These plates didn’t perform as well on the flatbed cylinder press. Our Cottrell will make two passes with two ink rollers prior to an impression. Ours presently is running at 15 impressions per minute. (Chuck Dunham at the Babcock of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, in 2008 on YouTube is feeding at 12 impressions per minute.) We noticed that in time there was a tendency for the impression rollers to chip away or tear off the leading edge of the plates.

We have gone to clipping off the leading edges of the plates from iron hand press use (in damaged conditions) to replacing them with leading edges that have the full plate edge. ** We found that at higher speeds, the plate needs the full surface of its material in order to properly brace the plate and withstand the fast pressure of multiple rollers. **

In the future, we’ll likely proof our plates in the iron hand press without clipping any material. We buy our plates from Boxcar Press and will leave the plates the same size received from the seller. We also recommend their film adhesive. The knowledge that the full plate helps on the flatbed cylinder press is more important. We’ll look at any inking on our iron hand press plate edges as a cost of the process.

In the event we decide we have a project, however, where we want to exclusively use the iron hand press, we’ll clip the edges to avoid contact with the hand ink roller.