Administration - Printing Materials

Printing Materials

In this section, you manage the printing materials (paper grades) used for output on the (offset or dig­ital) press. The printing material parameters that you enter in this tab support a standardized output process.

The information on the printing material is stored in the Master Data Storage (MDS) and therefore is available to all computers connected to the Prinect Server.

Defining Printing Materials

You can define new printing materials in the material list with "Create Printing Material" or modify an existing entry with "Properties".

The following parameters are available for naming and identifying printing materials:

•Group:

•Brand

•Article Number

•Name

•Quality

•Material type

•Cost per 1000 sheets

•Type of Printing Material for Calibration

•ISO Paper Type

•Width, Height, Thickness

•Grammage

•Ink Consumption Factor

•Grain direction

•Feed direction

•L*a*b*

•"Active for Automatic Selection" option

Note: If you do not know various parameters when you are creating a new printing material, you can take the values from the reference table to complete your data:

Group:

The "Group" parameter lets you group printing materials for faster identification if you should have a large number of materials. You can enter a freely selectable group identifier in the "Group" column, but it is not mandatory that you specify this. Using the "Group" parameter is a good idea especially if you wish to group the materials (see the section Grouping Printing Materials).

Brand

You can enter a brand in this box, for example, the one used by the manufacturer.

Article Number

Article numbers are entered automatically if the Prinect Manager is connected to an MIS system. If this is not the case, you can enter brands for new printing materials in this column.

Name

Printing materials are defined in Prinance if the Prinect Integration System works with Prinance as its MIS system. In Prinance, printing materials are managed solely by article number. As a result, differ­ent article numbers may be defined for one brand. In this case, it's possible for you to define an alter­native identifier for the printing materials in the "Name" column. A name is generated automatically if you don't enter an identifier in this column. The automatic name is generated based on the follo­wing pattern:

•The brand is used if there is no article number.

•The name is made up of the brand and the article number, separated by a stroke, if there is an article number.

Note: Please do not use the term "Default" as the name.

Quality

If necessary, you can enter quality information here. This parameter is not available for all printing materials or is not used by all processes in the workflow referring to printing materials.

Material type

This parameter is needed for packing materials. The material type must be specified to generate a correct PDF 3D with the Cutting Die Editor.

Cost per 1000 sheets

This is where you can type in the cost for 1000 sheets. This value can make it easier to determine the printing costs if print jobs with multiple sheet optimization (Prinect Signa Station) are to be calcu­lated.

Type of Printing Material for Calibration

Default calibrated paper types are listed here. Select the (calibration) paper type that you wish to assign to the paper.

Note: Make sure that you have a calibration for the (calibration) paper you selected (refer to "Calibration Manager - User's Guide).

ISO Paper Type

You can choose between one of five paper types:

•1 glossy coated

•2 matt-coated

•3 web, glossy coated (for web offset)

•4 uncoated

•5 uncoated, yellowish

Width, Height, Thickness

Enter the geometric data of the paper in this box.

Grammage

Grammage (grams per m²) refers to the exact weight of the paper.

Ink Consumption Factor

The ink consumption factor (in percent) is a gauge for the paper-specific consumption of ink with a defined area coverage density in print.

Grain direction

The grain direction is important for folding the paper. You can choose between the following grain directions:

•Long grain and

•Short grain

Feed direction

This parameter lets you set the feed direction of the paper in the machine. This parameter is designed solely for digital printing and makes it possible to specify the direction in which paper grain is ori­ented for printing materials used in digital printing. This detail lets you specify the correct orientation of a paper grade for digital printing. This parameter also displays in the table of printing material parameters.

L*a*b*

The L*a*b* values for the paper's basic color are entered in these columns. The percentages are entered separately for L*, a* and b*.

"Active for Automatic Selection" option

You can assign "Active for Automatic Selection" to printing materials for creating gang job layouts on Prinect Signa Station. These printing materials are then automatically set by default for the gang job layouts on Prinect Signa Station.

This attribute displays in its own column in the list of printing materials.