Welcome to the National Council National Council Sheetfed Offset Practice Test

Below is a practice test to gauge your knowledge and expertise on the sheetfed offset printing process. This is not a pass/fail test, rather helps you determine how prepared you are to take other tests offered by the National Council. All questions and answers are copyrighted material and are the sole property of the National Council for Print Industry Certifications.

1) To increase productivity, some presses are designed to print on both sides of a sheet of paper during one pass through a press. This is called:

2) _________ controls the absorption of printing ink and helps reduce the picking of surface fibers.

3) Excess acid in the fountain solution causes which of the following printing problems?

4) Which of the following is a recommended remedy for streaks appearing horizontally in the printed image?

5) The ________ sits between two oscillator rollers and serves to smooth, condition, and transfer ink, connecting the other rollers in the system.

6) Ghosting most often appears in:

7) In a 10-minute period, an ideal lithographic ink should:

8) Picking, plucking, tearing, and similar problems occur when paper or coating is not strong enough to withstand the pull of the inked blanket. The principal causes are insufficient bonding strength in the paper or excessive ink tack. Which of the following recommendations helps to minimize or eliminate surface rupture problems?

9) Blankets usually have their thickness marked on the back. Even so, all new blankets should be checked by making a number of measurements at the center and edges of each blanket. The device best suited for measuring the thickness of blankets is:

10) Standard viewing conditions are necessary to communicate the desired results and to ensure accuracy and consistency in color reproduction. One of the standard viewing conditions specifies that the surround (the surrounding area) should be a special color—Munsell N8/. Munsell N8/ is what color?

11) Which of the following would be considered a typical trapping value?

12) Non-uniform blanket thickness is a likely cause of:

13) _________ is a densitometric measurement that indicates how well the three-quarter tone to shadow areas of an image are reproducing on press.

14) Because of the danger of static charges resulting in a flash fire, containers must be __________ before transferring flammable liquids.

15) To maintain image quality during the pressrun, the operator is concerned with the ink film thickness being printed on the paper. When ink films are printed too thickly, many problems result including which of the following: