Technical Resources
Prepress Information and Operational Success By Mark D. Gojkovich
Introduction: Paper, Plastic, Tinplate Metal, no matter the substrate being printed on, there is a prepress department behind it all responsible for assuring the final product is correctly printed, manufactured, and satisfies both customer expectations, and meets manufactured quality standards. As the saying goes, water flows downstream. Every decorated can or packaged product seen on a store’s shelf started with a prepress department organizing the job project as the first step in a long process to get to its final destination.
In any manufacturing process, there are a multitude of critical component factors that must work together and if even one point within the process is defective, it can lead to a consequentially flawed end-product. The sooner an error is caught or stopped within the downstream process, the less costly it becomes. It is better to avoid such a scenario from the start, and it all begins with prepress playing a vital role in the production work process.
Mission Critical: As with any specialized production process, there is an entire array of machines, operators, equipment, etc. and the same holds true for prepress. Prepress is often perceived as a simple graphics production process that supplies presses with the plates needed to print a job, but it’s so much more. Prepress operations must contend with software programs needing constant updates, maintaining plate setter (imagers) lines, managing data on server systems in the terabytes, calibrating proofing devices; the list goes on. But… there is one critical KEY factor that is so often overlooked, almost to the point of obscurity, yet so vital, when it comes to managing the prepress operations, that every manufacturing step following prepress depends on this one critical factor to be successful. What is the big secret to the successful process? What can be more important than a souped-up RIP system creating rastered tif files from perfectly trapped art with spot on colors (see caption 1) all output at the correct line-screen and angles you ask? INFORMATION! What?!?!: Yes, you read right. Information. As mundane as it sounds, entire pallets of cans can be discarded and recycled after running the entire course of production, start to finish, only to end up in the trash bin because of inaccurate or missing information. Managing a prepress operation is not magic. For sure, there is a precise science behind the technical specifications of precision manufacturing, and though the press and assembly plants depend on the quality of our color proofs and press plates (see caption 2) as the final product of prepress manufacturing, the cans being delivered to customers around the globe are done so successfully, because of critical information management.
Caption 1: Photo of color management software tool used for press production and global color management. Photo Courtesy of Midwest Graphic
Caption 2: A fully automated plate production line with Auto-loading plate cassettes and automated plate stacker with multi plate size output capability and built-in press- punch system. Photo Courtesy of Midwest Graphics
FUNDAMETALS Newsletter
[12] Q2 2023
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