Kon’nichiwa! (I figure that since I’ve been in Japan I might as well say something in Japanese!)
For the last two weeks I’ve been in Japan chasing my pro snowboarding dreams, and searching for the legendary Japow. And, as my latest OOO mentions, living 14 hours in the future. It was strangely not as different as I hoped it would be but perhaps 14 hours isn’t far enough into the future to have a meaningful impact? The trip was incredible in every sense of the word. Coming back to real life is going to hit hard. Here’s a photo of my atop Mount Asahi (Asahi-dake). It’s an active volcano and if you look closely at the image you can see two fumaroles spewing steam and sulphur-stinky gas just above my head.
Nikky returned from her adventures in Thailand looking refreshed and full of life. Take a moment and ask her about her travels – she had an incredible experience. To call it life-changing may seem like hyperbole but I think that’s the case.
The pace of change around the building has slowed a little as we settle into our new systems and layout. Things are working as we hoped across the board. And spurring new ideas.
TwinPro World HQ Happenings
For the first time in many months I have very little to report since our last TwinPro Update:
• Floor plan for the eastern warehouse space finalized. We’ll start this project in the next couple of months.
• Lighting throughout TwinPro offices replaced/upgraded to high-efficiency LEDs.
Plate Setter
The last two updates discussed our Epson proofer, and the Xerox machines in our prepress department. The main piece of equipment that actually lives up to the name “pre press” is our platesetter. This is the device that takes the digital file and converts it to an analog output on a metal plate using lasers. The plates are then mounted on the press and that’s how things get printed. We make a plate for each colour – usually just four for CMYK, but it PMS colours are needed there is a separate plate for each one.
I would post a video of the machine in action but there’s nothing to see at the magic happens inside. From the outside it just looks like a giant metal box. Boring but vital.
The plates are metal and coated with silver. Once we’ve printed a job we clean them up and collect them. Every month a silver reclamation company comes by and buys them from us. They then extract the silver and recycle the metal.