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Story and photos by Susan Delap
On April 16, 2004, the club sponsored a tour of Starline Printing, one of the largest commercial printers in Albuquerque. Club members Kim Coleman, Rachel Armstrong, and Susan Delap joined club advisor Dr. Mott in Albuquerque for this interesting adventure.
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| Kim's excited to get started. Susan drove the behemoth 16-passenger van from Socorro to Albuquerque and Rachel navigated. (Photo by Rachel Armstrong) |
Kim, Rachel, and Susan outside Starline Printing before the tour. (Photo by Rick Mott) |
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| Our fearless leader, Dr. Mott, in the posh lobby of Starline Printing (hoping we'll all behave). |
Our tour guide shows us print samples as she gives us an overview of the tour. |
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| Dr. Mott and Rachel looking at a color proof from the Agfa Sherpamatic Inkjet plotter (in background on left). |
An example of a marked-up color proof of a fine art color reproduction. |
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| Our guide shows Dr. Mott a Pantone color swatchbook with Rachel and Kim looking on. The prepress room is in the background. |
One of the digital scanners in a light tunnel. |
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| The lens of the camera used for photographing "camera-ready" artwork. |
Our guide is standing in front of the area where artwork is placed for photographing. Notice the overhead rails where the camera slides to focus. |
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| In the digital-to-plate room. The light-sensitive film requires special lighting and NO FLASH photography. |
Our guide shows us a copy of the plate that is currently being used on the webpress. |
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| Kim next to the 6-color sheetfed press. Colors are usually CMYK and can include additional "colors" such as solid colors (Pantone) and varnishes. |
Printed sheets coming out of the 6-color sheetfed press |
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| Another sheetfed color press |
A really small sheetfed color press |
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| A worker loads rolls of 36-inch-wide paper onto the web press. |
The webpress in action |
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| More parts of the webpress. The big aluminum pipe in the middle background is blowing out air to dry the ink as the paper is whizzing by. |
Our guide inspects the final product with more parts of the webpress in the background. |
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| Coming off the webpress--descending into a mysterious hole--on the way to being cut and folded. |
Folded items from the webpress whizzing along to their next destination |
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| This folding machine sounded like a machine gun as sheets of paper bounced through it. |
This binding machine is assembling booklets to be folded and stapled. |
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| Cases and rolls of paper waiting to be printed |
Printed jobs on pallets awaiting delivery |
At the end of the tour, our guide offered us free samples of printing and answered questions. I learned that Starline's operation is so big that jobs need to have a minimum of 1000 copies printed to be cost effective, otherwise you are better off going to a smaller printer, but even then a typical minimum is 500 copies. Starline's website is informative and has general tips on prepress file preparation.
Thanks to Starline Printers for allowing us to tour their facility, to our informative guide for her excellent job in explaining all the workings of the printing process, and to Dr. Mott for making the arrangements for the tour (and for the tasty lunch at his home after the tour).
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