just bought an offset press...

[strawberryluna]

for the love of god watch your hands and head and fingers ALL OF THE TIME.

gah. learning to operate a press by myself = nightmare of the farm-equipment-injury-alone-in-a-field-type-of-terror.

and everything jay said x a kabillionty-zillion.

[SFPrinter]

It will be difficult to be competitive for "real" work like letterhead, envelopes and brochures. But Zines are a fun occasional use for a press like this especially if you can offer a letterpress or screen printed cover. Most Zines are printed digitally and are limited to papers that will feed on copiers. A good thing about this press is it will print heavier cover stocks as well as very textured papers.
Polyester plates for this press can be made on larger laser printers like the Xante 912 (will make film positives for screen printing too). These have been on the market long enough to be affordable and are PostScript ready.
We enhance our Zine market by helping folks with binding options like simple pamphlet stitch and Japanese Stab bindings (see samples at Fine Book-Binding | Logos Graphics.
The first rule in offset is if you can't feed the paper you can't print.
Many Community Colleges offer offset printing classes.

[vrooooom]

Exactly; I wonder how the offset guy I hang out with can stay in business. He charges about $35 for a set of 1000 business cards and charges our studio 3-4 dollars for cutting down our coventry rag art prints.

I will say that I had a recent job where we screenprinted WB ink on 70# text that turned out really nice after he ran it through his folding machine. Straightened out all the warps that developed in that paper from printing a large solid on the page.

Offset is the new letterpress, which in turn is the new screenprinting. Artists always pick up the "latest" technology which they can afford.

[El Raton]

The Xante plates seem to be the trick these days. You can also print them from an HP or similar laser printer that can do 11"x17". Also you can find Itek Silvermasters for next to nothing now a days. They require film and chemicals (and they're big and bulky) but it's a totally analog way to shoot plates, similar to using a stat camera except you don't need a darkroom.

SFPrinter.. if you need anyone to run your GTO i know a few really good offset printers in the Bay that are looking for work right now.

[Nick4u1]

Nice find on that screen printing gear, perhaps with the recession I could happen accross some screen printers closing up shop and selling off gear....hhmm...now theres an idea.

[altieri]

offest = spending $$$

[altieri]

for the love of god watch your hands and head and fingers ALL OF THE TIME.

Best advice right here!

[paul204]

So shit has been moved in. Pretty excited at this point.

The move wasn't sooooooo bad but it was pretty bad. I spent about 10 hours with one other person disassembling the press and 30" lever cutter and taking away everything two people could carry. This left us with the two support arms from the cutter, the cutter bed, the press base and the press print head. Moving these up a narrow flight of stairs was not fun but was very doable with 4 people (one of whom was superman,) an appliance dolly and heavy duty moving straps. If a cutter or press of this size are available anywhere sans stairs it would be a piece of cake moving them.

The press has been assembled and seems to be working so far. Both motors are working and I've got suction. It took me all day today, but the feed/register boards are timed to the impression grippers and those are timed with the delivery cylinder grippers, so it's feeding paper through and tripping at the right moments.

What I didn't realize before which is the sweetest part of this deal is that the old man I bought this stuff from is very excited that I'm a young gun excited to print and is going to come down here and walk me through platemaking, preparing the press and running it. He had never taken the press apart, so he told me to get it feeding and timed properly and he'd show me everything I needed to know about the press.

The press has a registration board that jogs the paper into register right before the impression cylinder pulls it in for printing which apparently is not a common feature on presses of this caliber. I'm very excited to see what I can do with it. It will be good to cut my teeth on a cheap press that I have tonnes of replacement parts for (as there is a second identical press I got in the deal) and then move up to something nicer if things go well.

This is what it all looks like once everything was said and done:



You can check out more pictures of its assembly, the cutter and a letterpress I just got at Flickr: Tad Nerman's Photostream.

I will post more once I've given printing a shot. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

[austininin]

used to run one of those in high school. it was a great job press. good luck. looks like it's in great condition.