Abstract
The principal reasons for applying a pigment coating to paper are to improve appearance and printability. The pigment coating provides a surface that is more uniform and more receptive to printing ink than are the uncoated fibers and, in turn, both facilitates the printing process and enhances the graphic reproduction. The improvement in print quality is readily apparent, especially in image areas or when multiple colors are involved. Although pigment coating of paper is to improve the printability, coated paper is not completely free from printing defects. Actually there are a number printing defects that are observed only with the coated papers. Among the printing defects that are commonly observed for coated papers, print mottle during multi-color offset printing is one of the most concerned defects, and it appears not only on solid tone area but also half dot print area. There are four main causes of print mottle ranging from printing inks, dampening solution, paper, and printing press or its operation. These indicates that almost every factors associated with lithographic printing can cause print mottle. Among these variation of paper quality influences most significantly on print mottle problems in multicolor offset printing, and this indicates that paper is most often to be blamed for its product deficiency as far as print mottle problems are concerned. Furthermore, most of the print mottle problems associated with paper is observed when coated papers are printed. Uncoated papers rarely show mottling problems. This indicates that print mottle is the most serious quality problems of coated paper products. Overcoming the print mottle is becoming more difficult because the operating speeds of coating and printing machines are increasing, coating weights are decreasing, and the demands on high-quality printing are increasing. Print mottle in offset printing is caused by (a) nonuniform back trap of ink caused by a nonuniform rate of ink drying, referred as "back trap mottle, and (b) nonuniform absorption of the dampening solution. Furthermore, both forms of print mottle have some relationship to the structure of the coated layer. The surest way of eliminating ink mottling is to eliminate unevenness in the base paper. Coating solutions, often easier to put into practice, should, however, be considered. In this paper the principal factors influencing print mottle of coated papers will be discussed. Especially the importance of base paper roughness, binder migration, even consolidation of coating layers, control of the drying rate, types of binders, etc. will be described.