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Die-cutting is a manufacturing process widely used in printing industry. With this method, large numbers of the irregular shape from a material such as wood, plastic, metal or fabric are generated, and almost any shape you desired can be created. Die-cutting is often applied into a range of the printed products, such as labels, business cards, envelopes, folders, cartons, and documents, etc. However, not all printed products are suitable for using this method.

When determining whether a substrate is suitable for die-cutting, the following points should be considered:

1.The thickness and firmness of the material.

2.The stretch and elasticity, or spring back, of the material.

3.The coatings or laminated components of the material.

Besides,  to provide a high quality (“clean”) die-cut, the following factors should be considered:

1.The type of substrate that will be die-cut.

2.The type of die and blades used for the cut.

3.The cutting surface (hardened steel? compressible substrate?) on which the substrate will be placed during the process of die-cutting.

4.The type of equipment that is used to apply the die-cut.

Gravure is a printing process that uses intaglio, or recessed, image carriers. The image carrier, which is flat or cylindrical, moves through an ink pool. A blade scrapes excess ink off the plane of the plate, leaving ink in the recessed wells. A second cylinder presses the paper onto the plates, where it picks up ink from the wells.

The high speed of gravure presses and the durability of the metal intaglio plates make gravure an economical printing method suitable for large print runs (more than two million copies). See also intaglio, plate, printing methods.

UV ink specially formulated to dry quickly with ultraviolet (UV) light while still on press. UV drying improves turnaround time because it eliminates waiting for the first side to dry before printing the second side. This eliminates the need for the paper to pass through the press more than once. See also dry trap, ink, wet trap.

Book and text weight papers that are made to withstand the rigors of offset printing. These papers are more resistant to water and less susceptible to picking.

Most book and text grades of paper can be used on offset presses. Often the term “offset” is used synonymously with “book.” The basic size of off- set papers is 25″x38″. See also basic size, book papers, picking, and text paper.

A printing term which describes wet ink coming in contact with paper and spreading as it is transfers. As the halftone dots are applied to the paper, the wet ink spreads, causing the dots to increase in size and halftones to appear darker. Paper weight, type of paper (coated or uncoated) and press type (especially web presses) affect the amount of dot gain in a given printed piece.

You may compensate for dot gain by calculating the dot gain before a print job and lessen the density of the images to be printed before you output film. See also dot compensation, four-color process, and halftone.

For screen printing, a screen is made of a piece of porous, finely woven fabric called mesh stretched over a frame of aluminium or wood. Originally human hair then silk was woven into screen mesh; currently most mesh is made of man-made materials such as steel, nylon, and polyester. Areas of the screen are blocked off with a non-permeable material to form a stencil, which is a negative of the image to be printed; that is, the open spaces are where the ink will appear.

The screen is placed atop a substrate such as paper or fabric. Ink is placed on top of the screen, and a fill bar (also known as a floodbar) is used to fill the mesh openings with ink. The operator begins with the fill bar at the rear of the screen and behind a reservoir of ink. The operator lifts the screen to prevent contact with the substrate and then using a slight amount of downward force pulls the fill bar to the front of the screen. This effectively fills the mesh openings with ink and moves the ink reservoir to the front of the screen. The operator then uses a squeegee (rubber blade) to move the mesh down to the substrate and pushes the squeegee to the rear of the screen. The ink that is in the mesh opening is pumped or squeezed by capillary action to the substrate in a controlled and prescribed amount, i.e. the wet ink deposit is proportional to the thickness of the mesh and or stencil. As the squeegee moves toward the rear of the screen the tension of the mesh pulls the mesh up away from the substrate (called snap-off) leaving the ink upon the substrate surface.

There are three common types of screen printing presses. The ‘flat-bed’, ‘cylinder’, and the most widely used type, the ‘rotary’.

Textile items printed with multi-colour designs often use a wet on wet technique, or colors dried while on the press, while graphic items are allowed to dry between colours that are then printed with another screen and often in a different color after the product is re-aligned on the press.

The screen can be re-used after cleaning. However if the design is no longer needed, then the screen can be “reclaimed”, that is cleared of all emulsion and used again. The reclaiming process involves removing the ink from the screen then spraying on stencil remover to remove all emulsion. Stencil removers come in the form of liquids, gels, or powders. The powdered types have to be mixed with water before use, and so can be considered to belong to the liquid category. After applying the stencil remover the emulsion must be washed out using a pressure washer.

Most screens are ready for recoating at this stage, but sometimes screens will have to undergo a further step in the reclaiming process called dehazing. This additional step removes haze or “ghost images” left behind in the screen once the emulsion has been removed. Ghost images tend to faintly outline the open areas of previous stencils, hence the name. They are the result of ink residue trapped in the mesh, often in the knuckles of the mesh, those points where threads cross.

While the public thinks of garments in conjunction with screenprinting, the technique is used on tens of thousands of items, decals, clock and watch faces, balloons and many more products. The technique has even been adapted for more advanced uses, such as laying down conductors and resistors in multi-layer circuits using thin ceramic layers as the substrate.

Many printing techniques are used to produce posters. While most posters are mass-produced, posters may also be printed by hand or in limited editions. Most posters are printed on one side and left blank on the back, the better for affixing to a wall or other surface. Pin-up sized posters are usually printed on A3 Standard Silk paper in full colour. Upon purchase, most commercially available posters are often rolled up into a cylindrical tube to allow for damage-free transportation. Rolled-up posters can then be flattened under pressure for several hours to regain their original form.

It is possible to use poster creation software to print large posters on standard home or office printers.

Types of posters,

Propaganda and political posters

Advertising posters

Film posters

Comic book posters

Railway posters

Event posters

Boxing posters

Concert posters

Educational posters

Research posters and “poster sessions”

Classroom posters

Cheesecake posters

Fanposter

Affirmation posters

Band/music posters

Book posters

A Sticker is a type of a label with printings on one side and sticky on the other side. Often it is a piece of paper or plastic. They can come in many different shapes and sizes (usually colourful) and are put on things such as lunchboxes, in children’s rooms, on paper, lockers, notebooks and so on. Some people also choose to collect stickers and trade them with friends.

Stickers are very widely used when an object requires identification with printing of a word or an idea. Brand stickers may be attached to products to identify these products as coming from a certain company. They may also be used to describe characteristics of the products that would not be obvious from simple examination. A Label dispenser is often used as a convenient way to separate the sticky label from its liner or backing tape.

Companies can print your custom stickers. Sticker printing includs band stickers, school stickers, or stickers for your church, club, business or organization, and so on. Custom sticker printing services are popular for business advertising and promotion now.

They are frequently distributed as part of promotional, advertising, and political campaigns; for example, in many voting districts in the U.S., stickers indicating an individual has voted are given to each voter as they leave the polling place, largely as a reminder to others to vote. Other methods of underground forms of voting for your favorite graffiti artists’ current productions are by an open form of appreciation such as clapping while passing such a sticker (a smile and a kind reminder to a fellow appreciator throughout the day is commonplace as well).

Stickers placed on automobile bumpers, called bumper stickers, are often used by individuals as a way of demonstrating support for political or ideological causes. Identification of vehicle registration and last service details are two examples of stickers on the inside of most car windscreens. The term “window sticker” is generally used for vinyl labels which are stuck to the inside of a vehicle’s window, as opposed to water-resistant stickers that are stuck to the outside of a vehicle but can be affixed to anything.

Another common use for stickers is embellishing scrapbooking pages. With the advent of this very popular craft, every type of sticker imaginable can now be found: acrylic, 3D, cardstock, epoxy, fabric, flocked, sparkly, paper, puffy, vellum and so much more. While in the earlier days of scrapbooking stickers were sold mostly on 2″x6″ sheets, now 6″x12″ and even 12″x12″ size sheets are very common.

Stickers are sometimes put on guitars as a way of personalizing them, see guitar decal.

Digital printing refers to methods of printing from a digital based image directly to a variety of media. It usually refers to professional printing where small run jobs from desktop publishing and other digital sources are printed using large format and/or high volume laser or inkjet printers. Digital printing has a higher cost per page than more traditional offset printing methods but this price is usually offset by the cost saving in avoiding all the technical steps in between needed to make printing plates. It also allows for on demand printing, short turn around, and even a modification of the image (variable data) with each impression. The savings in labor and ever increasing capability of digital presses means digital printing is reaching a point where it will match or supersede offset printing technologies abillity to produce larger print runs at a low price.

Process

The main difference between digital printing and traditional methods such as lithography, flexography, gravure, or letterpress is that no printing plates are used, resulting in a quicker and less expensive turn around time. The most popular methods include inkjet or laser printers that deposit pigment or toner onto a wide variety of substrates including paper, photo paper, canvas, glass, metal, marble and others.

Consumer and professional printers such as inkjet or laser printers use the most common examples of digital printing.

In many of the processes the ink or toner does not permeate the substrate, as does conventional ink, but forms a thin layer on the surface and may in some systems be additionally adhered to the substrate by using a fuser fluid with heat process (toner) or UV curing process (ink).

Paper is an important part in printing industry. There are many kinds of papers for different kinds of printing. Different printed products needs different papers.

Such as, papers for business cards printing, papers should be harder, so cards could be kept longer and easier passed. Photoes printing used a totally different kind of paper, it is specially disigned for photoes. For books printing, papers are devided into two kinds, the cover and the inner pages, for cover, people sometime even use paperboard, and for inner pages they usually use lighter and softer papers.

At HiChinaPrinting.com, we’ve culled together a beautiful selection of fine printing papers that meet the high demands and expectations of our discerning customers. Choose from the best of the industry’s commercial paper, exotic handmade papers from around the world, expressive intense colors, various weights, sensual textures and sizes. What ever your need, we have the right paper for you.