That manual was produced the old fashioned way, using large sheets of white board, with the typewritten sections cut and pasted onto them, using glue to hold them down in position. Circuit diagrams hand drawn by a draughtsman on a large sheet of vellum paper, in pencil, then darkened with a Rotring pen afterwards to get the final diagram. The red was done with an acetate sheet overlay, which had the drawings made on it using a black Rotring pen, and a diagram on tracing paper placed under it, so you could see the placement to copy faithfully.
Then the final draft was signed off, and carefully placed in an exposure unit ( around 2m by 1m, using 2 1kW linear halogen lamps for light) and used to make a final lithographic film master. The developed film was then carefully checked again, to ensure that the halftones were right ( a woven screen used during exposure to make dots) and sent finally as a set of positives to the printer.
There they used these to make the final aluminium plates, and then printed the manual on the final paper using an offset press. Colour was done with a second print head, which printed the red ink on the page at the same time as the black, using the blanket to transfer the image. Big press for the long pages, using part of a very wide press, and doing all the other pages as sections along the wide paper. To print double sided simply turn over and print again, using talcum powder to keep the ink layers from sticking or transferring to the other pages. Then slit to size, collate and fold using a folding machine. Finally put the whole lot together and bind, then a final trim.
Bleeding expensive for a short press run, the costs of the plates are high, and the set up of the press is only doable with an experienced printer. You really want to print more than 10 000 copies to get the cost down, though I think Sony was able, because of the worldwide service centre network they had, to get to this level with ease.
The final print run for this would take a pressman around 3 days to run, and consider that the same job with 100 000 copies would also take the same time, with a lot less wasted paper in setup. You typically budget 1000 sheets for setup, as you lose a good number in initial alignment, then a few in setting the second colour, a few in the reverse side, a few in setting the slitter, a few in the folder and collation and the last bit in the binder, though the reject sheets often can be used in set up further down the line if one side or colour is correct. Your print order will be 10 000, plus a few dozen to a few hundred extras, depending on the printmaster and how experienced he is in setting up his press.
Yes I was a machine minder at times, running an offset press on occasion. Printmaster is now retired and we no longer do in house printing, external press for the few jobs that laser will not do as well. I got good at doing business cards and making scratch pads from the reject sheets, those that were not used as press cleaning sheets though, as they came out solid colour.
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
