A CIP3 Ink Presetting Model for Offset Printing Presses

CIP3 ink presetting technology is a widely used method to reduce the time and cost for make ready, and consequently improve production efficiency. It is also a key technology that promotes the integration of prepress, press and postpress. Through the analysis of CIP3 ink presetting technology and its application, this paper builds a calculational method of the ink coverage from 1-bit-tiff image and the relationship between ink coverage and ink key values is also fitted by Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm. Based on experiments in actual printing plants, an ink key presetting model is developed and tested. The results show that the model can reduce ink setting time significantly and consequently improve production efficiency.