The Science of Doctor Blades

A review of the top issues concerning doctor blades.

THE ARTISTRY OF doctoring the doctor blade is giving way to science. Tom Allison, president of Allison Systems (Riverside, N.J.), remembers when he used to ask his dad what the press operators were doing as he watched them prepare the doctor blade for printing. After hushing his son, Allison's father would say, "Pressmen are frustrated artists; each one has his own 'pallet' of special things he feels that he alone can do to make 'great art' come off the press."