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HOW TO... choose the right print technology
When it comes to printing corporate documents ranging from business cards to annual reports, there are usually two deciding factors: cost and quality. While the neighbourhood copy shop is well suited to small print jobs, once your document runs to dozens of pages and you need several thousand copies, a commercial printer using offset presses will likely be the more efficient option. "Offset" is a process whereby ink is transferred from a photo-sensitive plate on to the paper, via a rubber blanket. Having made the decision to take a print job to an offset press, few people want to hear about the type of printing press that will be used. But when you find you have paid too much or are disappointed in the quality of the job, you may wish you had picked up a few tips on matching your print job to the most appropriate printing technology. What are the two main types of printing presses? There are two kinds of press used in offset printing, depending on how paper is fed into the presses: sheet-fed and web. Sheet-fed presses feed large sheets of cut paper into the presses. Web presses are less common and much more expensive. They print on to continuous rolls of paper, and the pages are cut and folded after the printed image is set on the paper. What are the most suitable items to have printed on these different presses? Sheet-fed presses offer more flexibility of paper size and weight. They are well suited to printing business cards, letterhead, brochures, posters and smaller-run magazines. Sheet-fed presses are the most cost-effective answer for shorter runs -- typically up to 10,000 copies. However, sheet-fed presses produce less printed material per hour because they tend to be slower than web presses, which can print in excess of 40,000 impressions per hour. The increased efficiency of web presses is reflected in a lower per-unit cost. Newspapers are typically printed on web presses. The process is also well-suited to such large-run items as magazines, flyers, brochures, catalogues, inserts and annual reports. What about quality of printing? Sheet-fed presses range from simple one- or two-colour presses to high-quality machines used to reproduce items such as limited-edition art prints and high-end brochures with special inks and papers. The quality of printing produced by web presses has improved dramatically over the past decade. While the offset process has not changed, plates have been refined and sophisticated control of the presses allows for higher quality and faster speeds. These improvements, along with better pre-press work and digital technology, have moved the quality of web printing to the point where it is virtually indistinguishable from sheet-fed work to the non-expert eye, although printing involving special papers and inks can still only be done on sheet-fed presses. Why are both the number of pages in a document and the size of the print run important? The total number of pages to be produced can determine whether it is a job for a sheet-fed or a web press. While sheet-fed presses are best-suited to smaller documents, once the page count goes above 48, it is worth comparing printing on both types of presses. And even if you only need relatively few copies of a large document -- for example 3,000 copies of a 300-page manual -- a web press may be more efficient means of handling the large volume. Any tips on the finishing of my item? If printed items such as flyers are price- and time-sensitive, you can save time and money if the items come off the press ready to go -- that is, trimmed, stitched or glued and bundled. Sheet-fed presses only do the printing; trimming and binding are done in a separate operation. Longer timelines have to be factored in. Web presses can trim, cut stitch, glue and fold. This can save time and money. What are the benefits and limitations of digital printing? Digital printing is similar to printing from a desktop computer to an office printer. Sophisticated digital printers can handle much larger volumes, and can fold, glue and stitch fliers, brochures and manuals. This type of printing is relatively slow, and is cost-efficient only for small print runs. Digital printing is ideal for reprinting small quantities. If you printed 10,000 annual reports on a web press and then needed 200 more a month later, it would be expensive to set up the press again. Using a digital printer, you could have them done the next day for a reasonable cost. However, printing the original 10,000 annual reports on a digital printer would be exorbitantly expensive and would take several days.
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