Del Mar Blue is Green
by Virginia Lawrence

Appropriately, the Sandpiper is printed at Del Mar Blue,
which is green!  The ink (New Cervo) is friendly to the environment;
all their paper is recyclable; and, Del Mar Blue itself recycles.

Originally from Syracuse, NY, Pressman, Vince DiBernardo, studied graphic arts and printing for 4 years in Mission Viejo.  Here he is about to cover the film negative of the Sandpiper pages 1 and 12, with a yellow masking sheet.  The masking sheet allows the negative to be lined up exactly when the plate is burned.

The film negative of pages 1 and 12.

The masking sheet is laid over the negative and taped in place.  Then a large part of the masking sheet is cut away with an x-acto knife to reveal everything that will be etched on the plate, and to mask everything that will not.

This is the plate burner.  The negative and the yellow masking sheet are placed under a glass, and then flattened up against it by creating a
vacuum.  The light which does the etching is as
bright as a welder's arc, hence the blackout curtains.

The plate is ready to be etched.

The metal plate is flexible.  Here DiBernardo is ready to
install it in the offset printer, an RYOB1 512.  Del Mar Blue has digital printers as well.  But it is more cost-effective to print the Sandpiper using an off-set printer.

The metal plate being applied to the plate cylinder in the printer.

DiBernardo makes sure the metal plate is tightly in place.

Del Mar Blue's black ink is Green!

The ink pan.

Dave Preston: offset printing manager.

The ink is transferred from the metal plate on the plate cylinder (white) to a compressible rubber "blanket" on the blanket cylinder (blue), and then to the paper (not shown).

DiBernardo examining a Press Proof.  Everything on the printed page should line up with the negative.

1) In this example the words on the printed page do not line up exactly with the words on the film negative underneath it.  This sort of mistake can be easily corrected by adjusting the position of the plate inside the printer.  2) However, there is a smudge on the banner which cannot be corrected.   A new plate will have to be made. 

In order to make a new plate, a new negative will have to be made.  Here Dave Preston puts the new negative in a developing bath

The new negative is smudge-free. 

Let the presses roll!  Here the individual sheets of paper are separated by air and pulled tight against the blanket as they are fed into the machine.  This press can print about 11,000 pages an hour.  For the Sandpiper it was running at about only 8,000 sheets an hour.  If we discount the setup time, the actual printing of the Sandpiper (6 negatives, 2600 copies) takes about two hours.

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