hichinaprinting

Lamination refers to the process of adding a film to one side or both sides of prints. It is very useful and necessary for many products, including business cards, posters, calendars,maps, photographs, menus, price tags and many others.

The application of lamination often serves the following purposes:

1) Lamination adds luster or gloss to a printed product.
2) It provides stability to the sheet, allowing it to be more durable or stand upright.
3) It provides protection to sheets that are handled frequently or may encounter moisture.
4) Many laminated documents are waterproof, tear proof, and tamper proof.

Although it is very popular to produce prints with lamination for its various strong points, you still need to pay attention to the following tips before printing

1) Allow several days for laminated sheets to cure, since the adhesive takes time to fully adhere to the stock.
2) Use caution when applying a lamination film to varnished sheets. Use a varnish that dries quickly, contains minimal residual solvent, and contains no wax additives.

3) Do not laminate printed materials containing metallic inks since air bubbling adhesion problems may occur.
4) Use caution when a significant amount of anti-setoff powder has been sprayed on the sheet during printing because it causes adhesion problems.

It is a means or tool for placing ink on paper. Most printing is done with a plate. The four main types of printing methods are relief, where words or images are raised above the surface of the plate; intaglio, where they are etched through the surface; planography, on the same plane as the surface; and stencil, or screen printing, cut below the plate surface.

Words and images may also be “printed” electronically, using photocopiers and inkjet printers. See also electronic printing, intaglio, letterpress, lithography, offset, planography, plate, relief, screen printing, stencil, waterless printing, and web press.

Balance the relative humidity of the pressroom compared to the relative humidity of the paper to be printed. Relative humidity is a measure of how much moisture air or paper can hold versus how much it is actually holding at a given temperature.

Before printing a job, the printer must “cure” the paper by letting it sit, wrapped, in the pressroom for a determined amount of time. This will bring the paper to the same temperature and humidity as the pressroom, helping to prevent several printing problems.  For instance, ink on cold paper takes longer to dry than ink on room-temperature paper.

Ink on dry paper may “chalk” if the dry paper absorbs the liquid in the pigment before the solid pigments adhere to the paper. Paper with too much humidity will expand, causing it to wrinkle on press. This can cause misalignment and a lack or registration in the printing. See also registration.

Tack stickiness is a critical property of the ink used in lithography. Because the ink sits on a flat surface, it needs internal cohesion; in other words, it needs to stick to itself so that it doesn’t run all over the plate.

However, too much tack can cause it to pull the paper apart. When printing two or more ink colors in line, the ink tack and sequence must be adjusted in order for the ink to adhere to each other as well as to the paper. See also dry trap, lithography, plate, wet trap.

SGP (The Sustainable Green Printing Partnership) and Canopy (formerly Markets Initiative) have jointed hands to form an alliance for sustainability and environmental stewardship.

As an independent, non-profit environmental organization, Canopy is now working with printers throughout North America and having a policy with Canopy fulfills the ‘sustainability policy’ and exceeds the ‘responsible materials sourcing’ components of SGP’s Certification Criteria.

” ‘SGP’s alliance with Canopy represents a significant step forward.  Canopy’s program offers printing companies the tools necessary to meet and exceed certification criteria relating to responsible sourcing.  We are pleased to welcome Canopy and look forward to establishing a stronger working relationship,”stated Marcia Kinter,SGP Board of Directors Chair.

According to Neva Murtha, 2nd campaigner for Canopy, “Canopy is pleased to have formed this alliance with SGP because we provide the framework for leading paper purchasing policies that support endangered forest conservation and the development of the most environmentally friendly paper.  We are happy to support printers throughout North America in implementing this vision,”

Before setting out your printing project, a successful planning work is very helpful for the final success.Please consider all the steps required to bring your project to fruition:

1)Establish the purpose of your printed piece
2)Write copy and design
3)Rewrite copy and redesign
4)Gather photos & illustrations
5)Get consensus from all involved before giving the file to your printer
6)Rewrite copy and design….again!
7)File process and proof production by your printer
8)Proof review
9)Make changes to your proof
10)Subsequent proof review & changes
11)Printing
12)Bindery
13)Delivery
14)Distribution

A great graphic designer is absolutely necessary for any printing project.With a great graphic designer working with you, you business will be greatly benfitted,such as providing eye-catching design and a consistent graphic face for your business, which are merely the tip of the iceberg. A great graphic designer is a terrific communicator and has a wealth of technical knowledge to guide you through the printing process. She knows all about appropriate choices for paper and ink. She knows what a proof reveals (and doesn’t reveal). Image resolution? Handled. File preparation? Done. Font issues? Fugetaboudit! Seriously, like an expert in any field, graphic designers know a whole lot about stuff that would make the average business-owner’s eyes glaze over. Choose someone you can relate to, which will allow her to get to know you and your business. Then, you can relax and rely upon her expertise and knowledge.

Finding a good printer is also important for printing job. The names of printers with excellent reputations will tend to crop up repeatedly. A great printer brings a mix of technical expertise and artistry to the table. A great printing representative is very good at communicating those capabilities to you in the context of your project goals, then helping you reach those goals.

Letterpress is a relief printing method. Printing is done using cast metal type or plates on which the image or printing area is raised above the nonprinting areas.Ink rollers touch only the top surface of the raised areas; the nonprinting areas are lower and do not receive ink.

The inked image is transferred directly to the page, resulting in type of images that may actually be depressed or debossed into the paper by the pressure of the press. See also printing methods, relief.

Adhesive label backside printing means to print designs and texts on the surface of self-adhesive material with printing ink or pigment. In general, there are two purposes for backside printing.

1.     Images and texts backside printing

Print a few of texts or images on the surface of adhesive to form a double-sided label. The label is adhered to the transparent bottle of full of transparent liquid or glass, so the words on the label can be seen clearly through the transparent bottle or glass. In this way, it not only saves the stock of label and expense, but also has a decoration to these labels. Since labels have unique structures, so adhesive label backside printing also plays a role in anti-counterfeit

2.     The covering of backside adhesive

Not all labels are covered with adhesive on their full backsides, and some of them just need to cover parts of their backsides. For example, seal labels, which are re-stickable and removable, without covering with adhesive on the finger contact area. Another example is the labels with back cuttings. These labels do not have glue on the backside for the convenience of peeling off the backing paper. To meet the above labels’ production requirements, printing manufactures adopt the printing methods to remove adhesive. For instance, they can cover the adhesive by printing ink to make these labels non-adhesive, which achieves the same effect with spot covering process while manufacturing raw materials.

Backside printing is suitable for short runs of labels which do not have a high demand in accuracy. If labels are demanded in large quantity, the texts and graphics on the labels’ backside should be printed on the stock before producing labels. As for the production of backside covering labels, we can first make special stock in the method of spot skipping coating while producing the stock, and then produce labels with this stock. In this way, we can dramatically improve labels’ quality and production efficiency.

The difference between bronze stamping and bronze printing

Many people may be confused by bronze stamping and bronze printing, especially the novices in printing industry. Bronze stamping and bronze printing are two different special crafts. Bronze stamping is hot stamping foils, which transfers the design or text on to the surface of stock mainly by heating or pressuring. A hot stamping machine is needed to carry out this processing. While bronze printing only needs to add a pure color into common 4 four colors. Another difference is that the print with bronze stamping has some concave and convex feeling and feels more like metal texture. But it may appear the falling off of the coating if there is a mistake in the operation.

The followings are some samples to make you have a better understanding about the difference of these two crafts

Ink holdout is resistance to the penetration of ink. Coated papers tend to have good ink holdout. The ink pigments sit on the surface of the coating, and are not absorbed into the spaces between the paper fibers. This minimizes dot spread and results in a sharp image.

Uncoated papers tend to absorb ink into the sheet, but printers can compensate for this and still produce a very bright, sharp image on uncoated paper. See also coated paper, dot compensation, and ink absorption.

Halftone is a printed picture that uses dots to simulate the tones between light and dark. Because a printing press cannot change the tone of ink, it will only print the ink color being used on press. This works well for printing text or line art: the press simply puts a full dose of ink for each letter or line on the paper, creating small solid areas of ink.

But black-and-white photographs are continuous tone images, and printing a photograph this way would have the same result: large solid areas of ink. White areas of the photograph would have no ink; black areas would have black ink; and gray areas would have black, not gray ink.

The halftone mimics the continuous tone of a black-and-white photograph by converting the picture to dots. Photographing a continuous tone image through a screen creates a duplicate image made of dots. Darker areas of the photograph have bigger dots and lighter area of the photograph have smaller dots. To the human eye, the black of the dots blend with the white of the paper to create shades of gray. The result is strikingly similar to the continuous tone of a photograph. See also continuous tone, duotone, four-color process, quadratone, screen, tritone.