ink up
To apply ink to a roller in preparation for printing or to coat a roller with a preservative when not in use.
ink up: preparing rollers for the print run or for storage
In offset and letterpress printing, to ink up means to load ink onto the roller or rollers that will transfer pigment to the printing plate or type. This was a distinct preparatory step before each production run. The operator would manually apply ink from a can or ink disk to the roller surface using a knife or brayer, working it across the full width to achieve even distribution. The goal was a thin, uniform film of ink covering the roller's rubber or composition surface.
The term also applied to applying a preservative coating to idle rollers. Since ink rollers are vulnerable to hardening, glazing, and cracking when exposed to air or stored improperly, operators would "ink up" with a protective medium, essentially coating the surface with a thin film of ink or special roller conditioner to keep it supple. This was routine maintenance in shops that shut down between jobs or at the end of a shift.
Why the term has faded
Modern offset presses feature ink fountain systems that apply and distribute ink continuously during printing, eliminating manual roller inking. The mechanic's role shifted from hand-inking rollers to monitoring ink levels and adjusting flow rates on automated systems. By the 1970s and 1980s, hand inking was already uncommon in commercial print shops, though the vocabulary lingered in older trade literature and among veteran pressmen.
The term survives in historical printing texts and in the speech of retired printers, but it carries no functional meaning on contemporary machinery. Understanding it matters mainly for reading older press manuals, technical histories, and troubleshooting guides written before full automation became standard.