Cal Poly’s Graphic Communication Department held its 24th Annual Gravure Day on November 2nd with a variety of speakers in the gravure industry from all over the United States.

The day’s events were kicked off with the dedication of a new gravure cylinder engraver, donated to Cal Poly by the Max Daetwyler Corporation. Walter Siegenthaler was on hand to accept a commemorative plaque from the Graphic Communication Department and stayed on to deliver a presentation on the differences between electromechanical and laser engraving. Mr. Siegenthaler highlighted the capabilities of Daetwyler’s DIGILAS indirect laser engraving system and how engraving speed can be sacrificed to improve quality. His presentation was very relevant to what we were actually learning in our Gravure class.

After a short demonstration of the new engraver, Laura Wayland-Smith Hatch, of the GEF, and Cal Poly alumnus Gianna Pietravalle, of Quad/Graphics, spoke to the GrC 101 class about gravure printing technology, the various markets in which it is involved, and the opportunities it offers to students. Laura introduced the scholarship programs offered by the GEF, such as the Gravure Scholarship and their technical writing contest. Afterwards, Gianna took the stage and spoke about the gravure industry and her employer, Quad/Graphics. Due to her recent graduation from Cal Poly, we were able to relate to her as a student who is already successful in the gravure industry.

Norm Hall, Director of Printing Operations at Maverick Enterprises (located in Ukiah, California), spoke to the students about the steps needed in producing wine capsules. Due to the short run lengths, the most time-consuming and critical part of printing wine capsules is prepress. “Prepress time can take anywhere from 14-20 hours, while printing only takes 20 minutes,” said Hall.

Later on in the day, Gianna Pietravalle teamed up with fellow Quad/Graphics manager Glenn Lucas, on gravure publications operations. Quad/Graphics generates about $2 billion dollars in sales annually. Their largest customer is National Geographic. They have a fully automated gravure cylinder making and press functions in Oklahoma. This is the only site that can do double parallel folds on line on a publication press (i.e. Target’s Sunday ad).

Jean Jackson from Allison Blades spoke about how she got into the printing industry after graduating with a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Illinois. She discussed the role of consumer product companies in gravure. The top two topics that consumer product companies value most from suppliers are predictability of outcome and trust.

The final speaker to present was Walter Vail, President of St. Marys Paper Sales Co. After briefly introducing St. Marys Paper and the papermaking industry, he went on to discuss the various economic indications of a successful future in the business of paper and the printing industry as a whole. Although never having been personally involved in the packaging industry, Mr. Vail spoke very enthusiastically about the packaging sector in terms of growth and rapidly improving technology.

That evening, all the speakers joined a number of students at a local restaurant. This gave us an opportunity to speak with our guests on a more personal level.

We thought Gravure Day was a successful event with a large turnout of dynamic guest speakers. The topics that were touched on during the day were all very interesting and made us think about what we want to do in the future.

Gravure Day is supported by a grant from the Gravure Education Foundation in Rochester, New York. We are grateful for their ongoing support to make our education more fulfilling.