The Method Of Offset Printing

By Augusto Tan

Printing service is used by most organizations for different purposes such as marketing and intra-company communications. Hence it is helpful to know about the basic working of the frequently used printing process called offset printing.

The customers and the printers like offset printing due to its cost effectiveness for printing of large number of prints. Therefore good printing service providers recommend the use of offset printing for bulk prints.

The ink employed during offset printing has oil as the medium and does not dissolve in water. Its name comes from the fact that in this process, images are not transferred directly from the plates to the paper but this is done through rubber blankets as a medium.

First step is to prepare the graphics. When offset printing began, the images had to be made by the use of film negatives and they were later put on aluminum plates. But, a modern printing company would now develop the plates directly by using an image setting system. After this, the plate is stuck to a cylinder with the right side facing upwards. Water and ink, in that order, is spread on the image plates. The image gets the ink while the rest of the area receives a thin film of water, which makes sure that the ink does not spread beyond the images.

Next, the image is inverted when it is put on to a rubber blanket which is stuck to another cylinder. The image is then printed with its right side looking up by cutting sheets of papers into appropriate size and putting them on a third cylinder.

The job of printing is finished 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. - 29954

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