On surface details affecting the quality of commercial SC paper for gravure printing

A comprehensive assessment of commercial SC paper for rotogravure printing has been performed. The analyses include scanning electron microscopy and laser profilometry for quantifying the filler distribution and surface properties respectively. The study confirms the influence of the fillers on the optical paper properties. Increasing the amount of fillers in the surface layers reduces the surface micro-roughness and increases the glossy appearance of paper. The surface topography affecting the missing dots occurrence seems to be revealed by a quadtree decomposition approach and by bandpass-filtering, for assessing specific structure sizes of the surfaces. This approach reveals the influence of the surface structure between 80 and 160 mu m for inducing missing dots.