Why Gravure Printing Process (below)

Customer awareness Mr. Bramley said: “Previously the plate was chemically used, and sometimes the quality was not very stable. However, after the use of modern digital engraving technology, this situation did not exist at all. To be honest, so far, no one The customer expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of the graphics we printed.” In Europe, especially in Germany, most journals use gravure printing. BPC is also based on gravure printing. Moreover, with the expansion of business, gravure printing is still the mainstay for some relatively fixed publications. Mr. Chris Tribe, the printing manager of Reader's Digest magazine, recalls that about 1979, the Reader's Digest magazine was changed from rotary printing to gravure printing. Work for magazines. He said: “Our publication is fixed at 192 pages per month. When we encounter a relatively large amount of advertising, we also need to print 16 pages of information using web offset printing. This is a total of 208 pages. This 208-page magazine On average, it will be issued twice a year.” Because offset printing is fast and inexpensive, 16-page printing uses offset printing. Like other magazines, fierce competitive pressures are forcing them to increase their efficiency, send magazines to subscribers as quickly as possible, and at the same time require the magazine's print production to remain as fast as possible. The 192 pages of Reader's Digest magazine were all completed within one printing cycle of the gravure printing press. If offset printing is used, it is necessary to divide the content into parts for printing. This will increase the chance of arranging advertising content. Moreover, the print order of the advertisements can also be arranged in chronological order. Older or more urgent advertisements are printed first along with the contents of the first part, and later advertisements can be printed together with the following contents. This means that two or more production arrangements need to be formulated. However, if gravure printing is used, BPC can select a set of suitable rollers for print products with 1.5 million prints or so. It only needs to adjust once for the printing machine and print once, and the colors of the prints are more consistent. Offset printing cannot be achieved. Regarding paper, "Readers Digest" (Reader Digest) magazine originally used 56 g/m2 of high-grade calendar paper, because its grey tone after printing is relatively flat, and the paper's whiteness and gloss are not ideal, so From the beginning of this year, it changed to 57 g/m2 coated paper. The printing press was quite satisfied with the printing effect after the paper change. Not only did the quality of the printed matter improve, but also the adverse effects of paper price fluctuations were eliminated as much as possible. Recently, "Readers Digest" (Reader Digest) magazine has been digitally printed, eliminating the need for film and engraving the data directly on the rollers, shortening the production cycle by two days. The Argos catalogue has more than 20 million circulations per quarter, all of which are printed in gravure. Why use gravure printing? To address this issue, Steve Haithwaite, head of the printing department, explained this: “At least 72% of households currently have at least one catalogue of our products. We use gravure printing because gravure is more resistant to printing than offset printing. It is high and the color consistency of the printed matter is higher.In addition, the size of the gravure cylinder is relatively large, which can meet our 132-page printing requirement. The new gravure printing machine can even print 152 pages, which cannot be achieved by offset printing. Haithwaite said: “We have found that gravure printing is superior to other printing methods when printing on thin paper. The effect of gravure printing on 52 g/m2 high-grade calendar paper may require 57 g in offset printing.” In order to achieve the same printing effect, we can't afford the difference between the two papers in terms of our current print volume." Prepress issues, Argo has aimed digital imaging technology, Haithwaite Mr. Chen believes that the quality of printed matter obtained with digital imaging technology is higher and better. However, the problem is that the amount of investment required by the technology is relatively large and price has become a major obstacle. Mr. Haithwaite said: “Our main goal is to finally get a digital file. We have 7000-8000 products that need to be filmed as slides. All of our slides are digitally archived. After scanning and color correction, they can be archived in digitized files." "The prepress design studio can then call a low-resolution file in QuarkXPress, and the printing company can use the same A high-resolution file of this document is called in the document. We have found that using image substitution technology can save the cost for the prepress center and the printing company." There are thousands of price columns in the Argos product catalog, although within a day or two. A surprise summary of the latest product prices can be completed, but generally this is not the case, and price information will usually be entered within a few weeks before printing. Therefore, the color information is generally separated from the text, and the color information is separately sent to the printing company for color separation and printing. The text portion (usually black) is reserved until the final printing so that the price can be modified as necessary. Therefore, if digital engraving technology is used, the black version of the drum will generally need to be engraved twice. Mr. Haithwaite summarized the feelings of most customers of gravure printing: “As confirmed by this year’s ERA Foundation, gravure printing companies in the UK are as good as other printing companies abroad. I hope to continue to maintain friendly cooperation with them.”