Saturday 23 March 2013

Screen Printing Disasters

If you are a designer and going to finalize any job for Screen Printing then you need to read this post...

Working with Laser Transplant (Golden or Silver Color)

It was a bad experience when we sent some business cards for Laser Transplant (In this process a laser print, print the metal on single sheet and after that we stick that on the Paper, on visiting cards or letter heads.) Process. After that we had to print the name and company address on those visiting, one more thing the logo also had Green and Blue Color on it. That too we want to print by screen printing process. But that was not working because the position of logos pasted on cards was not same and it was impossible to print it by Screen so, we hired a painter and he did it manually. It was expensive to do it by this way. So we need to first screen process and after that we send it for print by leaf printing, or laser transplant. 

Edge to Edge Printing Problems in Screen

Once I designed a letter head for a corporate firm, I wanted that colored from the most left side. Then I sent it for screen print. You all know that we get readymade paper (Rim) for Letter Head. But my printer spoiled that job and the reason was that we need to give some space, some white space on the corners of page. We can not print on the corners. That can spread the color on the backside of paper. If you are a screen printer you will be aware about this thing.
So, if you ever want to design a cut flash letter head for screen. Please don't print on the readymade rim. First you need to purchase full sheet that will have extra margin, like .5 inch extra on left, bottom, top and right. Then give your cut flash design to print on it. Send it for cutting machine. And you letter head is done. This is only way to print cut flash letter heads on screen print.

Don't use more than 3 colors in any job

Never use too much colors in the visiting cards, letter heads, stationary items, envelopes, etc. if you want them printed by Screen. Because the process is manual. Every time for each color, a printer pick the paper and print on it. And that will loose the sharpness and new look of your paper. May be some can spread on your paper. I face this problem for Envelopes. It was looking old by going 5 times printed (5 colors) by screen printer.


Time Taking Process

If you have many more items to be printed as you have a greeting card with quantity of 5000 then never go for screen, it is manual and time taking process. You need to go for Offset for this kind of jobs.  It is clear that if you have more than 3 colors to be printed on a greeting and the quantity is 1000 then too go for offset. But you need to know about the specialty of screen and offset. I will describe in the next post soon...

Thanks for reading this post!!!

Thursday 14 March 2013

UV Coating in India


New technologies are coming out in the printing industry, UV coating or Laser Embossing be it. UV is advanced and affordable technology, which can make any print more attractive. Lamination just like it but it is wilder technique which is very clean. First we get printed the sheets and then go for UV coating process.   In UV Coating process spray equal amounts of polymer on paper. UV's brightness is better than Lamination, and the adhesive on the paper can not be lowered. Nevertheless, it is cost-effective techniques.

Here we will know more about this technique.
UV Coating
UV Texture