How an Offset Printer Works — Vantage

Everything around us that we see has been through a process. The final form of an object that is presented to us hides behind it a rich and colourful history. Where did it come from? How was it made? What procedures were involved in producing the objects that we see before us? The answer is sometimes a fascinating revelation. With print, it most definitely is so.

They first take shape inside the mind of a graphic designer who envisions the content, and uses the aid of technology to translate their ideas onto a computer with specialised software.

The pages that you see in fashion catalogs, children’s books and newspapers all have a story behind them. They first take shape inside the mind of a graphic designer who envisions the content, and uses the aid of technology to translate their ideas onto a computer with specialised software. Since print is a visual medium, the focus is kept to making the design eye-catching and highly appealing through the use of graphics, either through photography or by creating them manually. Once the design is complete, it is sent onward to the next stage of the process.

Traditionally, print material is created through a process known as offset printing, where images are transferred from metal plates to a rubber blanket, which is then applied to the printing surface. Once a design has been finalised, it is passed through the pre-press operation, where these metal plates are created through the use of specialised computer-to-plate (CTP) hardware and technology. Since print design is carried out in the special 4-colour model of cyan-magenta-yellow-key (CMYK), plates are created for each colour that is needed. These plates are considered an important part of the procedure, essentially making offset printing possible. Each set of plates can print up to 1 million copies.

Here arrives the main part — the printing press. The plates created earlier are inserted into the press, and the process of printing commences. Each print is run through the machine (in our case, the Heidelberg XL75), where the individual inks are transferred from rollers to a rubber blanket, and then to the printing material. This process produces highly-accurate prints due mostly in part to the international standards ISO 12647–2 of printing, and can generate up to 15,000 impressions per minute. Due to the cost of running the machine, orders are taken in bulk so as to produce enough quantity to justify operation.

Once the material has been printed, it is sent in for cutting according to the specifications of the job, and the process of binding and packaging begins. Bindings come in different varieties — from stapling, ring- and tape-binding, to more advanced techniques such as thermal adhesive binding — and the type of binding is determined on the material being produced, e.g. magazines or calendars. Once the pages have gone through the binding process to become the article they were intended, they are packaged and shipped off to their destination, where customers absorb the content that is printed on them.

In summary, the entire process through which a single leaf of paper is crafted into the page of a book that becomes available on shelves for people to read goes through an incredulous process — one that is the heart and soul of Vantage.

Vantage Printers was founded in 1992, and has won numerous awards for its quality printing. It also deals with branding for companies, helping them to achieve their Identity.