Matchprint

JFeig

PFG, Picture Framing God
Forum Donor
Joined
Oct 13, 1999
Posts
5,653
Loc
Oak Park, MI
Business
minoxy llc
Has anyone heard of or worked with Matchprints®? They are pre press proofs in the printing industry that are made up of 3 individual photo layers. The product is made by 3M. The surface is protected by a thin plastic sheet 3-4 mils via a very strong static charge. The actual surface is very shinny and rubbery in texture. We did no mounting services of any type in our shop.

When we carefully pulled off the protective sheet the image (photo emulsion) released from the backing and stuck to the release sheet on one edge. :eek: I also wonder if the rubbery surface had anything to wue with this failure.

We delivered the 3 proofs withing 24 hours to the agency (1/2" shorter than specified) who we worked with as we noted the initial failure.
 
Jerome: I thought this information would be fairly easy to find but I'm having zero luck on both the 3M and Imation web sites.

When I worked in Sales Promotion we would often frame the proofs for client lobbys. We always left the protect covering on, but that was MatchPrint I. I believe now they are up to MatchPrint III and I'm not sure what the differences are.

I would see if a local printer could help you out on this one because there doesn't seem to be any technical literature out there.
 
Perhaps I can shed a little light on this.

MatchPrint is a proofing technology intended to be used by a specifier of a print job to communicate what is expected to run on a four color printing press. It is used to "sign-off" and then by a pressman to guide the press run. These are relatively short lived prints and not intended for framing as a result. They yellow quickly.

Original Matchprint is made up of four layers of film each which carries a color from the press run C-Y-M-K, typically. When assembled on a backing paper it then imitates a press page.

This was developed and sold by 3M (St. Paul, MN) for decades. About 10 years ago 3M took a grab bag of products and divisions and spun these off into a separate publicly traded company, Imation (Oakdale, CA) under ticker IMN. Matchprint was a product of an Imation Division called Color Technologies. Imation in turn sold this division off to Kodak Polychrome Graphics (KPG) in very early 2002. KPG is a joint venture of Eastman Kodak and a large Japanese company with interests in the printing industry. KPG (Norwalk, CT) purchased this Imation division to "do away with a competitor" under the managment principal, "if you can't beat 'em - buy 'em". KPG can be found at www.kpgraphics.com.

They are doing very little with Matchprint as they have a competing technology/proofing system.

This is first hand info as I was with IMN Color Technologies during those years.
 
The printing place that I worked at had two diffrent systems for the proof prints that we used. They were both made by 3M. One was a heat set for all four layers and the latter one was a chemical process with a last layer being heat set so it could be a mat or gloss surface.

We use to keep them for years and pull them for every rerun of a print job. We stored them in drawers because like Dave said they will yellow when exposed to white light for extended peroids of time.
 
Back
Top