Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Discover Offset Printing

By Daniel Martin

Most companies need a printing service on a regular basis, whether it is for promotional purposes or intra-company communication. Hence it is helpful to know about the basic working of the frequently used printing process called offset printing.

The clients and the printers like offset printing due to its cost effectiveness for printing of large number of prints. This is the reason good printing service providers suggest the use of offset printing for bulk prints.

This printing technology uses oil-based ink, which the water can not dissolve. Its name comes from the fact that in this process, images are not transported directly from the plates to the paper but this is done through rubber blankets as a medium.

The process starts by preparing the designs. Earlier the images were produced by creating film negatives and were then transmitted to aluminum printing plates. However, a modern printing company would now prepare the plates directly by using an image setting system. This plate is then put on a cylinder in the proper configuration. Then the water and ink are spread on the image plates, one after another. The ink is poured over the image and to prevent it from overflowing, a thin layer of water is spread over the remaining part of the plate.

After being painted with the ink, the image is kept on a rubber blanket which is on a different cylinder, leading the image to be inverted. The image is now printed with its correct side facing up by cutting sheets of papers into appropriate size and putting them on a third cylinder.

The task of printing is completed by the printing company by consolidating the printed sheets using staples or glue or in any other way as per the needs of the client.

The most popular type of offset printing uses photosensitive chemicals and photographic techniques in transferring pictures and typing from original materials to printing plates. The original materials may be the actual photographic print and typeset text. Yet, it is more common, with the prevalence of computers and digital images, that the master copy exists only as data in a digital printing system.

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