PRINTING TECHNIQUES

Digital Printing

Digital printing is a reproduction process allowing the direct printing of documents from computer data.

The techniques used include: inkjet (continuous jet or demand jet), electrophotography or xerography, magnetography, ionography, elcography, and thermography.

Thanks to its flexibility, quality and speed, digital printing has become a natural evolution in the world of printing, eager to adapt to modern market requirements.

Digital is mainly used for printing on demand and short runs, in color or black and white, at reasonable costs, while heavily using the deadlines and inventories of printed documents.

It minimizes paper waste, pounding and chemical waste (no printing plates) compared to offset printing and with equivalent print quality.

– Flexography
Flexography is a direct printing process using a flexible printer in relief, the photopolymer.

It is used for printing cardboard packaging, newspapers and especially flexible films for packaging.

Originally, its name was given to it by a group of American printers-converters in 1953 and characterized the printing of aniline ink (aniline ink dye). Then, for reasons of improvement, technicality and resistance, the process was gradually improved through research and development.

Very close to Typography, “flexo” is distinguished by its printing form in rubber or flexible photopolymer, and the nature of the inks used today, based on dyes in suspension in various solutions, adapted to printed media. (water, solvent or UV inks).

This process is mainly implemented on rotating coils. The planetary (so-called central drum) design of the press is particularly well suited to printing deformable media such as films and flexible films. A honeycombed metal cylinder, called anilox, takes the liquid ink, and then deposits it on the surface of the plate. The printing medium then receives the inked imprint, the pressure of the contact being attenuated by the flexibility of the plate.

– Screen printing
Screen printing is a direct printing process using a porous planographic printing form.

It is used in the production of all types of projects, from the simplest (road signs or marking of vehicles), to the finest (printed circuits in electronics).

The particularity of screen printing lies in the thickness of the ink film deposited on the support. This “covering” inking, comparable to an application of paint, allows specific achievements:

Printing of fabrics, decals, decorations in glass or ceramics, printing on metal, in large or small numbers of copies (it is considered that beyond 5 copies, screen printing is more commendable than manual execution). In addition to matte, shiny, fluorescent ink-paint effects, silk-screen printing is carried out using tonisse (wool dust), glass or metal powder.

Exploiting the principle of the stencil, the printing form consists of a fabric of synthetic or metallic fiber (formerly silk), stretched over a frame. The non-printing parts being closed off by a varnish, only the printing parts let the ink pass through the weft of the fabric.

The printing form is applied against the printing support. The ink, of the consistency of a paint, is transmitted to the printing form and a breed ensures its forced penetration through the weft of the fabric. Given the thickness of the ink, drying requires a lot of precautions.

– The typography
Typography is a process of direct printing by a relief printer. It was the first and only printing process from the 15th to the beginning of the 20th century.

It is used in the realization of city works: business cards, letterheads, commercial cards, announcements, invitations – from a few tens to a few thousand copies – tariffs, prospectuses, small posters and posters, periodicals at very low print, small edition, art edition.

The process lends itself admirably to artisanal exploitation and allows the execution of complex text works, by adding various enrichments to the print such as gilding or relief.

One uses, for the composition of the texts, characters in alloy of lead, antimony and tin. These characters are classified in the “cases” (compartmentalized trays) where the composer draws to assemble the letters and signs, one by one, upside down.

In “lower case” are arranged the lower case letters, within easy reach, while the upper compartments, less accessible, are reserved for capitals (capital letters), which are used more occasionally.

The whole of the page, or pages, held tight in a frame, constitutes the printing form positioned on the marble of the press. An inking device by rollers applies the ink to the surface of the reliefs. The paper is then pressed against these reliefs to receive the inked imprint.

One of the main difficulties of typography consists in carrying out a rigorous leveling (setting up) of all the printing elements, because the hardness of the contact between the metal and the paper irremediably causes, at each point of excess pressure, a imprint accentuated indented in the paper.

Slight excesses of relief, thus created on the back of a print, constitute an immediately perceptible characteristic of typography. The other characteristic, detectable with a thread counter, is a slight “edge effect” which halos the letters and the weft stitches.

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