A Match Made in Color Heaven

In a previous article, we discussed how adding color management tools like G7 to the calibration process enhances your digital printing. In this article, let’s focus on maintaining those gains from color management with good process control. Process control and color management are the one-two punch that knocks out digital printing inefficiencies.

Set it and Forget it: A Cautionary Tale

I remember hearing a supposedly true story on the radio that really stuck with me: An elderly gentleman wanted to buy a new RV to take a vacation. He went down to the dealership and picked out the RV he wanted. It was fully loaded with all of the latest amenities and technologies, from a spacious kitchen and bathroom, to central air and cruise control. He drove it home carefully. He was really excited to set out on his big RV adventure. He packed all of his food and supplies, making a list and checking it twice. Finally, the big day came. He set out and got to a long section of highway, set the cruise control, and then went back to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. The RV traveled for almost two miles before driving off the road. Luckily, no injuries were reported, except maybe the sandwich and the RV.

We read this story and find it a little amusing, but as printers, we do the same type of things. We spend all this time calibrating our digital printers to these amazing, tight tolerances, then we just walk away and expect them to hold their course indefinitely. We get upset when things veer off course, but that is the nature of machines. They wear, move, adjust, and settle in, which means change and drift. They need to be recalibrated and pulled back into tolerance. How do you know when to make the adjustments? Enter process controls.

What is Process Control?

Process controls come in all shapes and sizes, from something as simple as a thermostat, to complex process controls that require a control room to maintain. When most people in the printing industry think of process controls, they think of monitoring their process, which is indeed process control. What many people don’t think about is process control also involves controlling your process. You have to understand and control your process before you can monitor it.

Why it Matters?

To use the example of a thermostat above, good process control is critical. Set it too low and one spouse is in a sweater; set it too high and the other spouse is roasting. Simply put, without process control, chaos ensues. The fact of the matter is, as with any machine, printers drift over time. Inkjet heads wear, laying down more ink than before. Inkjet heads clog, laying down less ink than before. The list goes on and on.

Process control helps you to understand which areas of your process are stable and which need your attention. Inkjet printing is a much more stable process than other printing technologies. When we were first setting up some of our production inkjet printers, we asked how often we would need to recalibrate. We were told about once a year. As we got deeper into our current state of process control, we began to see that at our volume, we would need to recalibrate monthly, not annually. That is the power of process control.

Controlling Your Process

One of the very first steps is to take time to understand your process. That is something many of us don’t spend enough time doing. What areas of my process can I control? What areas of my process can I not control? Understanding that helps you to focus on those areas we can control. How does maintenance fit in? Are we doing regular preventive maintenance? It is critical that we control our process and stabilize our system before we monitor so we can do it effectively.

Monitor Your Process

So, I have stabilized my system, now what? What are my first steps?

• Look at your process and decide what is important to monitor. What part of the process am I checking? Most process controls in printing involves printing and reading some type of color target with a spectrophotometer into some kind of software. What tools will I need to perform the readings? How many patches should I read? Where will I get the charts, and what will they look like? At IWCO Direct, we read four-color process from Idealliance 2013 three-row control strips on every production inkjet machine on every paper stock multiple times a day. What you do may look different. Are spot or brand colors most important? How could you go about checking those colors in a systematic way?
• Put together a plan for how to monitor. How will I print my charts to read? What device will I use to take the readings? We print what we call a Production Audit Check page at the beginning and end of every roll. This page has various color targets that the operators or Color Technical Support team can take readings from. We use automated color readers to take strip readings and handheld spectrophotometers to take brand/spot color readings.
• Choose a software to take the readings. There is a wide variety of software out there. Look at multiple tools and pick the one that best fits your needs, knowing that you may need more than one. At IWCO Direct, we use Chromix Maxwell for our automated four-color process readings and pressSIGN for our brand/spot color readings. The choices are endless. Make sure to take into account the people that will actually be taking the readings.

Creating a Culture of Control

One of the things that can lead to failure which many people fail to consider is education. Without buy-in from the intended parties, all your best intentions can still lead to failure. We want to make process control part of our culture. Some of the ways that we do that are:

• Educate your operators. Their buy-in is critical. Help them understand the benefits to them, and there are many. Show them how good process control can lead to more peace of mind, knowing that the job has printed correctly.
• Educate Customer Service and Sales on the benefits to the customer. One of the reasons that we made the process control software choices we did was to have better reporting for our customers. Your customer wants to know you are watching their print closely. Process control and reports are one way to do that.

Process control and color management tools work hand in hand to give you better consistency and greater peace of mind. It helps you to focus on the things you can control and the ability to know what you can’t. Put a plan together and get started today. Don’t drive off the road. Let’s put printing inefficiencies down for the count.

As always, feel free to contact me with questions or comments.

Mike Todryk is a Color Technical Specialist for IWCO Direct. He has more than 20 years of printing industry experience and has specialized in Color Management for the last 18.