Abstract
In conventional multicolor printing, mechanical dot gain plays an important role in tone rendering. This is predominant especially in high definition color printing since dot gain is enhanced correspondingly with the dot size per unit area. The objective of the study is to obtain an index to the mechanical dot gain prediction in printing. For this purpose the authors derived an equation from the parallel plate plastometer theory combining the dot gain with various factors for dot size, dot ink film thickness, ink viscosity, printing speed, and printing pressure. In addition, investigation on the validity of this equation was made using the published printing data. The predicted dot gain results, as compared with the dot gain values of 0.2∼0.3 experimentally obtained in halftone areas in actual printing, were found to be reasonable within a limiting range of 600 to 1000 lpi(line/1inchi).
