Producing two-component thermochromic pattern by means of offset printing Case study in a small printing house

The objective of this work was to produce an antifraud pattern comprising two parts. One part was designed as a chosen CMY combination with overprinted thermochromic ink, and the other one was designed as a CMYK combination, to match the color of the part with thermochromic ink. An offset printing press Roland 500 with five inking units was used. The process included profiling the CMYK printing press with no overprint and profiling the CMYK printing press with thermochromic magenta and thermochromic blue ink overprint respectively. For the chosen combination of CMY with thermochromic ink overprint, a CMYK simulation using color management was computed. The thermochromic ink overprints and the corresponding CMYK simulations were printed, and obtained color match was evaluated. Even though average color differences values were higher than 3.5, the visual perception of color match can be positively influenced by the pattern design.