Helpful Hints

Better Marking with Contact Printers

Replace your rubber type as a complete set, not piece by piece

To use rubber type most efficiently you should try to achieve even wear across your entire set of type. Rubber type lasts longest when you replace the entire set at once, rather than piece by piece. When you use new pieces of type and heavily worn pieces of type together, you will have to adjust the printer for excessive contact pressure in order to make a complete mark. This excessive pressure results in greatly accelerated wear of the new piece of type. For this reason, if the message you are marking does not change often, you should use complete "Type Rings". With these solid type rings, wear occurs evenly by default.

Replace the ink roll when it becomes "shiny"

The secret to the Offset Printer's quality mark is the "rough" texture on the face of its ink roll.

The texture of the ink roll carries the ink and applies a thin, uniform layer of it to the rubber type. Since this surface eventually wears out, you must periodically replace or refinish the ink roll. A heavily worn ink roll will have a shiny surface and will produce inferior marking.

To remedy the situation, you can either replace the ink roll yourself or call Matthews to have one of our service technicians perform the work. Note: ink rolls are available in different textures for marks that either bold (coarse ink roll texture, more ink transfer) or fine (fine ink roll texture, less ink transfer).

Use light pressure on the doctor blade to achieve maximum ink roll life

In order to "doctor" the ink, the doctor blade must press against the ink roll. Usually, the harder the doctor blade presses, the less ink is transferred to the to type wheel for marking. However, using extreme pressure in this way also accelerates wear of the ink roll. Therefore, when adjusting the doctor blade, use as little pressure as possible on the ink roll. Some customers have reported ink roll life of 2 years with proper adjustment of the doctor blade.