Advisor: Dr. Alexandra Pekarovicova

Description: Spot colors are specially mixed inks that come in a rainbow of colors, including some specialty inks such as metallic and fluorescent. Unlike process colors, spot colors are pre-mixed and applied individually to the printed page. Pigments make the greatest contribution to the viscosity of the liquid system. Acceptable and stable viscosity is a prerequisite to a stabilized system that will deliver the required printing finish. In preliminary work it was found, that the size of pigment particles diminished during long runs on gravure presses, which caused color distortion. Therefore, there is a need to manufacture more stable inks with surface modified pigments. The research is oriented to manufacture inks and monitor ink changes on the press and consequences in color change, which will help to better understand how to formulate shear stable inks.

Advisor: Dr. Margaret Joyce

Description: Development of a new test method to characterize paper coating. The interaction of coatings, inks and substrate is required to characterize paper coatings. Adhesion and delamination testing techniques are used to determine the strength of the coatings. A new test method is being developed to characterize coatings based on the friction properties that are used to evaluate the strength of these coatings. This test method uses multi-sensing technology based on simultaneous high-resolution force and electrical and acoustic measurements, allows for accurate measurement of delamination forces and controlling the applied load with repeatable results.

Advisor: Dr. John Cameron

Description: Our research aims at a systematic analysis of borate autocausticizing kinetics. Borate autocausticizing is a promising approach to the operational and environmental improvement of Kraft pulping and its chemical recovery. The advantages of utilizing borate autocausticizing include partial or total elimination of the lime cycle, pulp strength improvement and capital and maintenance cost savings. The uniqueness of this research is the usage of a thermo-gravimetric analysis to study the kinetics of the borate/carbonate reaction. Furthermore, the two objectives of this thesis are: to investigate and apply the usage of TGA (ThermoGravimetric Analyzer) in this type of studies and to generate experimental reaction rate data for a kinetic model for the borate autocausticizing as well as investigate the effect of carbon dioxide on this rate. The experiments are designed with three control variables: stoichiometric ratio of borate to carbonate, reaction temperature and amount of carbon dioxide in the reactants environment. The response variable is the amount of carbon dioxide generated from the reaction. The weight loss as a result of carbon dioxide emission is measured by the TGA and the results can be displayed graphically or exported to an Excel spreadsheet. Moreover, the data will be analyzed through material balance, kinetics modeling and statistics. .

Advisor: Dr. John Cameron

Description: Hussam's dissertation concentrates on studying the differences in drying behavior of fractionated fibers and factors control or affecting that behavior.

Description: The monitor is an important part in many digital applications including graphic design, digital photography and prepress proofing. In fact, designers and prepress personnel rely on their monitor for good color decision for their printed jobs. Therefore, it is important to have an accurate monitor setting for accurate color display. Technically, the color display of the monitor depends on the correlation between monitor and the platform it's on and the type of video card available.
The aim of this research is to achieve a consistent color across the platform using the same hardware (CPU, monitor video controller, etc.) A monitor profile will be built in Mac and Windows platform and then applied to Linux. A program code will be built to directly deal with the Video Card Color Look Up Table (CLUT) in the way of reading and updating the CLUT values. A softproofing procedure will be used along with an EPSON 9800 printer to evaluate the monitor profile. The accuracy of the softproofing and profiles that are used will be evaluated and studied.

Advisor: Dr. Alexandra Pekarovicova

Description: Gravure is the major printing process used for publication such as longrun magazine, catalogs, newspaper, and miscellaneous commercial printing. In gravure printing processes, color proofing is for the purpose of checking the color to ensure that it is as desired, before proceeding to cylinder engraving. There is no doubt that paper properties have significant effects on the image reproduction for either printing or proofing processes. The uniformity of ink absorbency and color density are greatly influenced by the paper surface properties. Color density in turn determines the color gamut and color fidelity. The optical properties of a paper also influence the visual quality of the printed image. In order to achieve uniformity of printing and obtain good color reproduction performance, it is important that all paper properties are well defined and controlled. Therefore, it is necessary to understand how these paper properties affect color reproduction for printing and proofing processes.

This study investigates the correlations between paper properties and print quality/color reproduction for gravure publication printing and ink jet printing used in digital proofing stages. This study will have three stages - gravure publication printing trials, color gamut analysis of digital proofing systems, and proof - press color matching stage. In the first stage, the gravure press will be fingerprinted, meaning all the conditions such as doctor blade angle, pressure, impression roller pressure, dryers temperature, press speed, ink formula, ink viscosity, will be adjusted to optimum value and keep constant for the rest of the experiments and target values such as print density, VIELAB values, will be obtained. Meanwhile, the correlation between the surface properties (roughness, porosity, permeability, pore size, formation) and ink mileage/print quality/color reproduction will be studied. In the second stage, the relationship between paper properties and color gamut of a digital proofing device will be investigated. In the third stage, the quality of proof - press color matching will be evaluated in terms of the color difference (?E) in CIELAB color space. Understanding the relationship between paper properties and print attributes can help to predict and control print quality and fidelity of color reproduction for digital proofing and gravure publication printing.