A Transducer to Regulate the Ink/Water Balance in an Offset Machine

In offset the printing plate is the element to be controlled, most particularly the ink/water distribution which constitutes an image that can be analyzed. This sensor provides an evaluation of the image that represents the ink/water distribution on the offset plate. Evaluation of the image quality permits a closed loop regulation of the offset process. This process model derives from the Takahashi phenomenological analysis of ink transfer. The Takahashi model was extended to design a sensor capable of analyzing such an image. The integral of the transfer function of the process responsible for the image represents an efficient quality index for the image.