Have You Had Your Twinlock Today?

First-rate print quality can only be achieved by precise print registration, all printed colours need to be aligned perfectly. Even the smallest case of misregistration can cause an unappealing print, leading to waste and delays in getting your prints to the customer. Today’s widespread use of multi-colour print designs, the printing of sharp negative fonts, and overall demanding print designs with a variety of different elements call for special attention to the topic of print register.
Misregister can be caused by many factors, e.g. imprecise mounting of printing plates, machine roller settings, and tolerances of consumables such as printing plates or plate mounting components.

With our unique tesa® Twinlock technology, we can at least support the topic of tight component tolerances to contribute to precise print register.
During and at the end of the production process, the outside diameter of each tesa® Twinlock sleeve is measured by a unique laser measurement device to ensure a thickness tolerance unrivaled by any combination of sleeve and plate mounting tape in the market today. Normally, several tesa® Twinlock sleeves are ordered as one set, and every set we produce is tailor-made. Our flexible production process allows us to ensure that the tolerances within one set are reduced to an absolute minimum.

Bouncing occurs when the cylinders lose contact with each other during printing, resulting in poor print results. Complicated design elements on the printing plate can contribute to bounce, but even the normal combination of image and non-image areas put the print cylinder in some state of “un-balance”. Machine settings and wear and tear of machine components also play a role when trying to avoid bouncing issues. One more reason can be the plate mounting foam properties.
The foam we incorporate in our tesa® Twinlock sleeves is a specially designed PU foam and we use a very thick layer to compensate for vibrations occurring on press and to smoothen out the effects of unbalance within the printing press. Increased printing speeds are made possible because our specialised foam absorbs the bounce occurring in the press, which would otherwise make a machine speed reduction necessary.