Silkscreen press calibration

Prerequisites:

  • PrintFactory 6.3.2 or higher is needed.

Getting Started

The Silkscreen calibration wizard is invoked when creating a new VISU PMM and when in the printer/queue selection page a Silkscreen printing queue has been selected.

Please note that the printer/queue selection selection page will be skipped when a printer is selected already in the main window it’s printer filter. Make sure it is set to “All Printers”.

Linearisation

Linearisation of silkscreen presses differs from linearising other digital presses.

The process starts by assuming an  CMYK as ink set. The inks are presets for later jobs to be send to the printer. When a channel in the job is present with the name specified here those halftone settings are copied.

Using the + and – buttons more ink channels (and thus linearisations) can be added/removed. Unlike with other printers this will not result in those channels actually being added to the job. Only if the job has those channels they will be used.

Add/Remove channels

Use the + and – buttons below the channels list to add or remove channels.

Change channel definition

Double click on any of the fields like Ink Name, Angle and Frequency to make the value editable and change its value. Press enter to confirm the change.

Change dot gain

Enter the measured values from the “Silk calibration wedge.pdf” in the edit fields and click “Change” to accept them.
Or click in the graph to add a point and move it. Or select an existing point and move it. After selecting an existing point pressing Delete/Backspace will remove the point from the curve.

Print wedge

Use the print button to send the “Silk calibration wedge.pdf” to the printer. Or print the wedge, located in the application directory, using another method. Or use another wedge printed earlier.

Profiling

After setting up the linearisation for the chosen channels the wizard will offer to select a default ICC profile for this device. At this point an industry normalisation profile from FOGRA or GRACol or a custom profile can be chosen. As long as the channels used in the ICC profile are available in the set of channels defined during the linearisation.

To make custom profiles for embedding at this stage choose the “Create Reference Profile” wizard from the Calibrator its Tools menu and follow the wizard. The resulting ICC profile can be used as profile for the silkscreen PMM.

Updated on May 19, 2022

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