Thursday, December 10, 2009

What You Should Know About Offset Printing

By Myra Santos

Many significant tasks in a business such as maintaining flow of information within the company and marketing the products of the company require printing service. Therefore, it is good to have some fundamental knowledge of how printing works, particularly offset printing, which is one of the most widely used printing technologies.

Offset printing can generate a large number of prints quickly, which makes it less costlier than other techniques and also more well known. Hence for bulk orders any good printing company would recommend you to go for offset printing.

This printing technique uses oil-based ink, which the water can not dissolve. In offset printing, rubber blankets play a transitional role in copying the image on the paper, which is to begin with on the plate.

The first step is developing the images. When offset printing began, the images had to be made by the use of film negatives and they were later transferred to aluminum plates. In the current times, the printers can make use of the image setting system for preparing the plates directly. After this, the plate is stuck to a cylinder with the correct side facing upwards. Then the water and ink are spread on the image plates, in that order. The image receives the ink while the rest of the area receives a thin coating of water, which makes sure that the ink does not spill past the images.

Next, the image is inverted when it is put on to a rubber blanket which is attached to another cylinder. After that, sheets of paper of desired dimensions are put together and the rubber blankets transmit the image to the sheets on a third cylinder, where it comes out as the correct side.

Printed sheets are stapled, glued, or assembled in any other way as needed and the printing company delivers them after giving some finishing touches.

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