A Perspective on Keyless Inking

Printing without column control of inking is an inherent feature of flexography, as well as gravure. It is commercially available for letterpress, and will soon be available for lithography. The greatest keyless inking benefits are being obtained in newspaper production applications at present. Letterpress and flexography have the advantage of being single-fluid processes. The design of the corresponding printing press systems primarily involve mechanical engineering inputs with minimal need for chemical considerations. Lithography requires two fluids, ink and water. For keyless operation, the press system must be designed to properly bias the interactive chemistry of these two fluids. The research and engineering efforts to do this have shown that keyless lithography meets or exceeds practical expectations. New insights have been provided into the nature of lithography.