Calibrating a Fast Press

This month I got to calibrate a very fast narrow web press. This press can print at 700' per minute. Getting the color right quickly is paramount. Failing to do so, implies an incredible amount of wasted paper. A clear issue was that the press was plugging values over 80%, specially on the black channel. To calibrate the press I used our Ink Optimizer product. Basically I created an ICC of the press by averaging measurements from several press sheets. This to allow for press variations.
The paper being used on press was type 1. The press' CMYK Lab values were within the GRACoL ICC profile and ISO tolerances. However, the RGB values were quite off. I configured our Ink Optimizer to have GRACoL was the input color space (profile). As for output, I used the ICC I created for the customer. This makes all jobs, processed by our ink optimizer and printed on the customer's press, to look like they were printed on a G7 calibrated sheet feed press.
The results were very impressive, no more plugged shadows. Colors were bright and crisp. We printed a sample job that uses well known images and they matched the GRACoL samples I had with me. The customer was very happy, so was I.
Have you though about calibrating your press? Give us a call and we'll help you get there.