Customised KBA press to print Pantone colour charts

The new two-colour Rapida 105 has undergone rigorous testing at KBA’s plant near Dresden by Pantone’s founder, chairman and CEO Lawrence Herbert, his technical staff and press crew. The new press will be used almost exclusively to print the colour charts, which have made Pantone a household name throughout the print industry.

“In 1963, Pantone embarked on a course to provide the graphic arts industry with a quality and reliable language of colour communication,” said Herbert. “The reproduction of colour to exact standards is of vital importance to designers, printers and clients.”

Printing the Pantone colour charts accurately demands extraordinary technical finesse and plenty of know-how. The Rapida 105 is designed to print textual descriptions and colour specifications in the first unit and Pantone colours in the second.

To achieve the necessary accuracy and density, lateral movement is reduced to almost zero. The ink duct in the second printing unit has ink separators spaced 3cm apart – the precise width of a single ink key. This allows each colour to be split cleanly from the adjacent ones, enabling the duct to be filled with up to 34 different colours, each of which creates an image just under 3cm wide.

The colour must remain stable in the direction of cylinder rotation along the entire length of the sheet.

“Extensive research has been done in the development of this specialised press,” says Ken Niepokoy, vice president of manufacturing and colour technology. “It is imperative that our brochures and publications are printed with the highest quality.”

One of the Rapida 72’s many tasks is to reproduce Pantone’s patented six-colour printing process, Hexachrome. This is the second KBA press to be installed in Pantone’s New Jersey headquarters. A Rapida 72 six-colour press plus coater went in two years ago.