Bar Width Reduction

[Schlick]

Does anybody have any advice on determining workable Bar Width Reduction (BWR) settings for wet offset printing. A customer of mine is having problems with scannabillity of oversized codes.

If I understand correctly, BWR shouldn't have to change that much on letterpress plates (as the polimer is fairly firm) especially if the printing is to be a kiss impression - let me know your thoughts.

Is this more an inking problem, or is it something I can fix by altering the BWR slightly?

[rhctp]

You have to be extremely careful when reducing bar widths. The only things that I would suggest is that you get something like Bar Code pro and maybe reduce the size to 80%.

[David]

Originally Posted by Schlick

Does anybody have any advice on determining workable Bar Width Reduction (BWR) settings for wet offset printing. A customer of mine is having problems with scannabillity of oversized codes.

If I understand correctly, BWR shouldn't have to change that much on letterpress plates (as the polimer is fairly firm) especially if the printing is to be a kiss impression - let me know your thoughts.

Is this more an inking problem, or is it something I can fix by altering the BWR slightly?

How are your barcodes generated? Are they .eps files or .jpq, .tiff? If they are not .eps files, you cannot do a BWR. What output resolution are the barcodes built for? You may just need to up the res to carry the detail so they can be more easily be read. Also, if the bars are short, you may have diffuculty getting them to read.
Do you know how much press gain you are getting? This will help in determining the BWR.
I use Bar Code Pro and it comes with a PGT file (print gain target) which is used to determine the gain on your printer.

Here's a Link for some more info on BWR.

Hope this helps,
David