Letterpress printing experience turning to lithographic printing experience

Despite the widespread use of digitization, networking, and computer technology in the printing industry, the popularity of offset presses has enabled the printing industry to enter a new era. However, due to the geographical and other reasons in China, the printing industry has developed unbalancedly, and some small factories still use letterpress machines.

The use of letterpress printing machines to print color trademarks and packaging and decoration prints, if the machine's high level of design, good performance, the operator's quality is better, but also get a better print product.

Due to the limitations of traditional habits and many factors, many small and medium-sized printing companies still have four-opening and offset printing presses. They still cannot afford letterpress printing machines. Many color printing businesses still use letterpress printing and are afraid to use four. Opening and printing off off-color printing of offset printing presses and other color prints have prevented the use of offset printing presses. How to make color printing more advanced, from the traditional letterpress printing to a new world of offset printing? The author discusses some views based on the factory's experience.



1. Changing the concept and raising awareness of the leadership of these small and medium-sized printing factories must first fully understand the advantages of offset printing, abandon the backward letterpress printing equipment, improve the quality of workers in an all-round way, and enable printing to keep pace with the development of the times.



2. Improve the quality of designers to improve the quality of designers, so that designers fully grasp the overall process and technical essentials of offset printing. With computer technology and graphic design software, the design that meets the offset printing process requirements is completed.



3. Spot color printing training can be used to change some of the slightly larger letterpress color print jobs to offset spot color printing. The specific approach is: the use of letterpress printing two color or three color no image, no transition color trademark manuscript, according to offset printing required number of openings, the use of computer typesetting, output required positive image film, drying PS version , According to the original letterpress ink color deployment spot color ink, offset printing machine for spot color printing. Since there is no complicated image and no transition color, it is possible to use a regenerated PS plate, which is more economical than the use of letterpress in terms of cost, and the printing speed is high and the quality is high.



4. Four-color printing training After several spot color offset printings using a single-color offset printing press, the original manuscripts that were printed using a letterpress printing machine were still separated by a scanner and typeset by a computer to perform four-level offset printing. Transfer printing, such as a common three-color trademark Letterpress, a large area of ​​the background color is green, the product name and registered trademark is red, the description text is black, and some blank. First, the trademark was re-colored, so that a large area of ​​the green background consists of Y70%, C50%, red is made up of M100% and Y80%, and black text is made into a 100% black version. In this way, the original three-spot color printing with letterpress printing was made into a four-color printing plate, which was directly printed with offset four-color ink. Compared with letterpress printing, the use of offset printing of the trademark has one more color sequence, mainly due to technical training considerations, because it will allow operators to get exercise, lay the foundation for future printing four-color offset jobs, not all The original trademark using letterpress printing must use more than one set of editions after being changed to offset printing.



5. Employ experienced personnel to conduct on-site instruction With color spot printing and simple four-color dot-spot offset printing, it is much easier to print complex four-color overprint jobs later. In the first printing of four-color offset printing business, personnel with certain offset printing experience should be employed to conduct on-site instruction. With the ever-expanding experience in offset printing and the continuous improvement in the level of technology, small and medium printing companies can print out high-level offset products.

In summary, in order to print high-quality color offset products, in addition to having advanced printing equipment and technologies, high-quality PS plates, inks, and papers must be used. High-quality color offset printing products reflect the comprehensive level of printing plants. To view color offset products as works of art, only in this way can we produce beautiful products.

Donghai County Middle School Liu Hengping, Jiangsu Province