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Offset printing is an indirect printing technique which is for a longer period dominant printing technique in the graphic arts industry. Basic printing principle is based on the selective wetting of the printing and nonprinting areas because of their physical-chemical properties. The printing areas are hydrophobic and oleophilic which enables them good adsorption of the printing in ink the printing process, and on the other hand, nonprinting areas are hydrophilic and are in the printing process adsorbing fountain solution. In order to achieve desired printing quality and minimalize amount of the waist printing materials, it is essential to keep defined surface characteristics of the printing plate during the plate making process and the plate’s exploitation.
This project has two main goals:
- optimization of the printing plate’s developing process by defining developer solution and all its variable and invariable parameters, for example composition, temperature, saturation and possibility of refreshing the developing solution in order to achieve better developing quality and decrease amount of the developer used
- to determine chemical wear of the printing plate as a function of fountain solution type and to recommend fountain solution’s composition that enable best stability of the nonprinting areas, while keeping the printing process quality in defined boundaries.
The conducted research so far have proved that used measuring methods for investigation of the printing plates, for example contact angle measurement, calculation of the surface free energy and roughness parameters, enable one to detect changes on the printing plate’s surface. But, to define mechanism of the aluminium oxide layer’s change it is necessary to use electrochemical impedance spectroscopy thus enabling to differentiate influence of every developing process parameter. In addition, electrochemical investigation methods, including linear polarization resistance, potentiodynamic polarization and cyclic voltammetry will be used to determine chemical wear of the printing plates.
Short description of the task performed by Croatian partner
The Croatian research group will be conducting investigation of the printing plate making process parameters and methods of data selection and analysis for the purpose of the quality assurance management.