Six good reasons to cut down on alcohol

There are both financial and environmental benefits to be had from reducing or eliminating alcohol from your press, but the key to doing it successfully is in the fount solution.

Printers want to cut down on alcohol. Reducing the amount used on press to the lowest possible level - ideally none at all - saves money and improves environmental performance but the practical impact is that it can be difficult to get a consistent ink/water balance. When the pressure's on to deliver a job to an urgent deadline, the temptation is to reach for the alcohol to get the print right and worry about the costs later.

Fujifilm's pressroom specialist Joe Christopher takes the view that using alcohol in the fount can mask a multitude of sins, including unnecessary ink and fount usage as well as poor maintenance and operating standards. He makes an analogy to driving a car, in which the accelerator represents the ink duct setting and the clutch the dampening:

"You can use the clutch to control the speed of the car when you should be using the accelerator," he says. "What tends to happen when alcohol is used in the fount is that first the ink level is increased, then the dampening is turned up to fine-tune it, then the ink is increased again, then the dampening again, until both are too high. The alcohol allows you to get away with it before scumming (ink pick-up on non-image areas) begins, but it wastes ink and fount solution. If you can reduce the alcohol, you can actually get more colour from less ink."

The right solution

But this is dependent on having the right fount solution. The fount has to perform a number of tasks, such as protecting and re-gumming the plate as well as wetting the non-image areas. Christopher splits fount solutions into three categories - those that rely on alcohol to work, those that are helped by it, and those that don't need it at all. "Cheap founts rely on alcohol and won't work without it, though in sheetfed printing, most founts fall into the second category. With the PressMax founts, Fujifilm is pushing to move sheetfed print into category three, and in a lot of cases we can achieve zero alcohol," he explains.

Where alcohol can easily be cut out altogether is with web presses: "It's not at all difficult to go alcohol-free on a web press. We can do it in a matter of weeks with Fujifilm pressroom chemistry. Anyone operating a web press with alcohol is just spending money they don't need to."

Better than that, trials at a major UK web press site at the beginning of 2008 showed that switching to Fujifilm plates and pressroom chemistry saved up to 10 per cent on ink usage. Joe Christopher points out that this adds directly to the bottom line, as the pricing of Fujifilm PressMax founts is comparable to other fount solutions. If there's no premium for going with an alcohol-free fount, switching to Fujifilm can therefore bring a double saving.

This is partly because Fujifilm is the only press chemistry supplier who also manufactures plates, giving it the opportunity to develop both plate and chemistry in tandem, as well as ensuring that PressMax pressroom products have been thoroughly tested with all Fujifilm plates.

Cutting down

The case is slightly less straightforward with sheet-fed presses, but Christopher is confident that most operations can at least halve their alcohol consumption - subject to the press being in a good, well-maintained condition, a good quality fount being used and there being support from management.

"If things aren't going smoothly on the press, the first response is often to reach for the alcohol," he says, "so there needs to be a commitment to learning how to get it right without this. I've known instances where once it's set up correctly, press minders have run alcohol-free whilst still believing they were using it."

More conservatively, Christopher says that aiming to cut alcohol from 10 to 5 per cent is a realistic target for sheet-fed presses which can be achieved without noticing any difference in press behaviour, rather than the more challenging goal of eliminating alcohol altogether, which requires a careful approach from press operators, and a well-maintained press with new rollers.

As well as having a suitable press, the right support throughout the organisation and a good fount solution, it makes a considerable difference where you get that fount solution, as Joe Christopher explains:

"Fujifilm doesn't just sell the fount and leave the customer to get on with it. We provide assessment, advice and support, sending trained technicians to oversee the installation and first steps. Most of our competitors don't do this, they don't have the personnel."

With oil prices remaining high and printer's margins as tight as ever, even a five per cent saving on alcohol must surely be worth making, and it's another instance where going green makes sound business sense.