ERA Seminar "Gravure at your fingertips"
Gravure at your fingertips
An introduction to gravure cylinder preparation and printing with demonstrations and practical exercises
10 - 12 February 2016 at Stuttgart Media University
Stuttgart Media University is the only university in Europe which operates a complete gravure line, from cylinder preparation through to a rotogravure printing press. Hence, the cylinder preparation and gravure printing department at HdM is unique in European further and higher education.
In the labs all aspects of gravure can be closely experienced and tried out, and the quality of all production steps can be tested with special measuring methods.
The introductory course offered here covers gravure in theory and practice, from the galvanics for copper plating of a cylinder, through surface processing and finishing, preparation of a layout and the subsequent electromechanical engraving process, to printing on several papers with different ink viscosities.
Besides electromechanical engraving, all workflow processes for other modern gravure cylinder engraving procedures such as laser assisted etching and laser engraving are explained.
All process steps are tried and tested on equipment in the cylinder preparation laboratory and in the gravure printing department. Participants will design a layout, help prepare and engrave a cylinder with it, and print it on different types of paper. These steps will be accompanied by quality control with the corresponding measuring equipment.
The course is designed to provide a practical overview of the whole process chain for employees of gravure printers, cylinder engravers and reproduction studios, from paper, substrate and ink manufacturers, and also for newcomers to the
industry coming from a different field. This course does not include advanced operator training and so is not intended for the experienced technical staff from gravure printers.
The number of participants has been limited to 10 participants per course. This enables each participant to take an active "hands on" part in each production step, which will enable a better understanding of the complete process.
