Mistakes That Can Affect Color Reproduction

Don’t Make the Mistake of Ignoring Your Environmental Conditions

A good environment is critical for printing. Your printing environment depends on many factors; temperature, humidity, and electrical support all play larger roles than you may think.

When it comes to temperature, you want to keep your printing environment at around 70 ± 10 degrees Fahrenheit (21 ± 5 degrees Celsius). Relative humidity should be around 50% (± 10%) and it should be non-condensing.

What is non-condensing? Consider what happens when you put a cold drink in a glass and then in a warm room. Water droplets form on the glass and it starts to “sweat.” That’s condensation in its simplest form, and you don't want this in your print environment.

Relative humidity is the measure of the moisture in the air compared to how much moisture the air can hold at a certain temperature.

Changes in temperature and humidity can negatively affect the viscosity or thickness of the ink as it’s laid down on the substrate. In turn, this can negatively affect your color reproduction.

SensorPush, or similar devices, allow you to keep tabs on your print environment from anywhere.

To maintain optimal temperature and humidity conditions, try to keep your equipment in a climate-controlled environment. Don’t place your printers near outside doors that are constantly opening and closing. Keep them away from other equipment such as heat presses that might produce temperature altering conditions.

To monitor your printing environment’s conditions, you can purchase an inexpensive device like the SensorPush. Devices like these can connect to your mobile phone through an app and give you instantaneous data on your environment and even produce trend reports.