\nOne\n of the occasional questions get asked is what is the difference between\n the digital types of print systems we offer, our in house digital \nprinting, our wide format printer, and our production partners high \nvolume digital and offset printing. You would think that with modern \nprint systems you wouldn\u2019t see much difference between them, both print \nquality and cost wise. The reality is the opposite is true, each has \nvery clear advantages and disadvantages to them. So in this article we \nare going to give you a general overview of each one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Firstly\n we won\u2019t be going into the technical details on how each system works \nbut we will include the links to articles on Wikipedia if you want to \nfind out more. Instead we are going to give tell you what each \ntechnology is good and bad at, so you can see why we use it to do \ncertain jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We use laser printers<\/a>\n to do the bulk of the printing we do in house. The system is no \ndifferent to the copiers everyone has used from time. With our system \nit\u2019s designed to print faster and at higher detail on a greater range of\n papers and cards than the self service machines you may have used. \nLaser printers are \u2018raster\u2019 printers, that is they create page as a grid\n of dots (over 600,000 of them on a A4) and each page is created as \nneeded. This means that each page is unique and changing the contents \nfrom one page to another adds no extra cost in time or resources. So \nprinting 1000 personalized letters takes no effort than printing 1000 A4\n flyers. This makes them ideal for smaller runs where there is minimal \nsetup costs and the time from file to finished page is measured in hours\n not days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We use an inkjet<\/a>\n wide format printer to print plans and posters on pages larger than A3.\n Fed by paper off a roll (though our unit also supports individual cut \nsheets) the printer will print to any length by the width of the paper \nallowing greater flexibility in page sizing. Inkjet printers can can \nuses a range of methods (variable drop size, overprinting several \ncolours together) to produce a greater range of colours. Our unit is \ndesigned as a general purpose printer, so it uses only six shades of \ncolour compared to the eight or more found on some photo lab printers, \nit still turns out excellent photo images when needed. We can also print\n on different types of material, including plastics and fabric. With it \nbeing a raster printer too, this allows it to dynamically generate each \npage as it prints it. If you want to print a set of personalized posters\n that isn\u2019t a problem.There are downsides to wide format \nprinters. They are much slower than our digital printers and are unable \nto print on card. A more significant factor is that we don\u2019t get the \nflat sheet costs that digital gives us so we have to charge by the \n0.01ml of ink used. So while a a4 photo you print at home is lot more \nexpensive for you than for us to print on our wide format, both of them \ncan\u2019t complete with the laser based technology on a cost per a4 sheet \nrate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Offset<\/a>\n is used to describe a large range of high volume large sheet & roll\n print systems. The key point is that they use a series of \u2018plates\u2019 that\n have been treated in a way so printing ink only sticks to some parts of\n it. The systems have a plate for each colour, with the standard of CMYK\n (Cyan Magenta Yellow and Key \/ blacK) but some have more, and as the \npaper passes under\/over it the plate leaves it\u2019s colour behind and is \nreinked then applied again. This happens at a very high speed, and the \nplates can be very large (A0 is a square meter of area and they print \nlarger than that these days.) This means that offset systems can print a\n large amount of paper for a little cost. It can be even more cost \neffective as most printing companies batch up different peoples jobs \ntogether to use one set of plates thereby reducing the total overall \ncost to each person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The downside is that it is very expensive \nand time consuming to get that \u2018first page\u2019 printed. The sets of \n printing plates have to be made for that job which takes time and \nmoney. The printing systems themselves a big complex devices that have \nto be kept running constantly to keep them functional and cost effective\n so normally the printers will batch up work of several different \ncustomers at the same time to get the most cost effective run per set of\n plates, which is another reason why Offset has a longer production \ntime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Taking\n the two technologies of laser and inkjet printing and scaling them up \nto industrial size, you get High Volume Digital. While the basic tech is\n the same, these high volume units are design with printing as many \npages as fast and as cheaply as possible. Normally either running of \nhuge rolls of paper or pallets of large size sheets, high volume trades \noff some of the finer details and ability to handle complex colours to \nmake the process more reliable for the high speed. It sits in the middle\n ground between standard digital in is unique page flexibility, and low \nprice per sheet costs of offset printing. There are some jobs we \noutsource to print partners for better cost efficiencies and production \ntimes, such as true-press books or complex things like printing on \nenvelopes, and these are handled by high volume digital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ll\n find that we use different technologies for different roles in Copy \nExpress. Anything that has to be done in small volumes or short \nproduction time goes to our digital print, up to A3 in size. Wide format\n is great for small runs of big items, like plans or posters. Big \nvolumes will be offset printed to give a much more cost effective price \nper unit with the tradeoff of time taken. High volume digital is great \nfor complex items small run items books and envelopes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s\n a quick rundown of the print technology we have access to in printing \nyour work. If you have questions or want to find out how we do your \nprinting for you, we are happy to answer them at any time. Just drop us a\n email or come on by and we\u2019ll help you understand what happens when we \nprint for you.<\/em><\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the occasional questions get asked is what is the difference between the digital types of print systems we offer, our in house digital printing, our wide format printer, and our production partners high volume digital and offset printing. You would think that with modern print systems you wouldn\u2019t see much difference between them, … Continue reading “Digital \/ Wide Format \/ Offset printing – what are they good for?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,79],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":923,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions\/923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The downside is that there is a \nlimit on how low we can get the cost per page. They are not designed to \nprint 10,000 of pages per day and most are limited to A3 printing \nsheets. So they will always be beaten by offset or high volume printing \non a cost per unit measure. Size limits alway prevent being able to do \nsome of the interesting paper sizes, or different types of materials. \nMost laser printers work with the standard four colours CMYK, so their \ncolour range only go so far and there are some colours\/shades that will \nnever print accurately. Overall though, for smaller runs done \u2018just in time\u2019 it\u2019s hard to beat Laser printers. <\/p>\n\n\n\nWide Format
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nOffset
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nHigh Volume Digital
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nWhat is used in what role
<\/h3>\n\n\n\n