Printing magazines, books, newspapers, stationery, posters, packaging, and other print items use a wide range of technology. The following are the most common industrial Printing Press in Dubai processes:

1.       Offset lithography

2.       Flexography

3.       Digital printing: inkjet & xerography

4.       Gravure

5.       Screen printing

1. Offset Lithography

Offset printing is the most common industrial printing technology, and it is used to produce a broad variety of items including cards, stationery, pamphlets, brochures, magazines, and books. It may also be used to make packaging like boxes or cartons.

A printing plate, which is most typically composed of a metal in offset lithography, includes an image of the content that has to be printed. Only this picture section of the plate holds ink when it is inked. After that, the inked image is transferred (or offset) from the plate to a rubber blanket, and finally to the printing surface. Printing on paper, cardboard, plastic, and other materials is possible, but they must have a flat surface.

The process of offset printing

Offset lithography is the full term of the offset printing technique. Both words describe different aspects of the Printing Press in Dubai process:

Lithography is a printing technique in which the image and non-image areas share the same plane. This indicates that the printing surface is perfectly flat. This is possible thanks to a simple chemical principle: offset printing ink is an oily material that repels water. If you can make a surface with a tiny coating of water on some spots, the ink will be repelled. The image areas must be lipophilic (or oleophilic) – that is, they must receive ink – whereas the non-printing portions must be hydrophilic – that is, they must reject oil but accept water.

2. Flexography

The content to be printed in flexography is on a relief of a rubber printing plate. This plate is inked, and the resulting image is transferred to the printing surface. Printing on paper, plastics, metals, cellophane, and other materials is possible using this method. Flexo is mostly used for packaging and labelling, with newspapers coming in second.

3. Digital Printing

The method of printing directly from a digital image to a variety of surfaces is known as digital printing. In professional printing, small-run works from desktop publishing and other digital sources are printed on large-format and/or high-volume laser or inkjet printers.

Digital printing may be accomplished in a variety of ways. The industry is dominated by two technologies:

Inkjet – Small droplets of ink are blasted from the nozzles of one or more print heads to generate the picture that needs to be printed in an inkjet printer. Inkjet printers can print on a variety of materials, including paper, plastic, canvas, doors, and floor tiles. Posters and signs are frequently printed using inkjet technology. It's also cost-effective for short-run publications like photo books or small book runs. To print changeable data, such as mailing addresses on direct mail pieces, in-line inkjet printers are frequently integrated with other types of Printing Press in Dubai.

Xerography - The image to be printed is generated in xerographic printers, such as laser printers, by selectively applying a charge to a metal cylinder known as a drum. To attract toner particles, an electrical charge is applied. These particles are transported to the media on which the print is being made. To ensure that the toner is well set, the substrate is passed through a fuser, which melts the toner into the medium. Laser printers are utilized not just in workplaces, but also for short-run printing of books, brochures, and other publications. Transactional printing (bills, bank paperwork, etc.) and direct mail are also done on these printers.

·       Print tasks that were traditionally printed via offset, flexo, or screen printing are increasingly being printed digitally.

·       In both colour and black-and-white short-run small format (A3 size) printing, digital is displacing offset. Digital presses from Xerox, HP, Canon, and Konica Minolta are used by quick printers and copy businesses.

·       Digital printing of labels is becoming more common.

·       Wide-format inkjet printers handle billboard and point-of-sale or point-of-purchase operations.

·       Small format printers are commonly used to print on phone covers, mugs, and other items.

·       Print-on-demand is becoming more popular among publishing houses. The Espresso Book Machine shown below is ideal for the task.

There are several different digital printing techniques aimed toward specialized niche markets:

Dye-sublimation is a printing technique that uses heat to transfer dye onto a substrate. Dye-sub printers are mostly used for textile printing, proofreading, and making photographic prints. Some printers are capable of printing on a number of materials, including paper, plastic, and cloth.

Heat is utilized in the direct thermal printing method to modify the colour of a specific coating that has been put on paper. This method is employed in cash registers, but it is also used to apply marks to items, such as serial numbers. A transparent ink is utilized for this, which changes colour when heated by a laser.

Heat is used to melt print off a ribbon and onto the substrate in the thermal ink transfer printing method. It's still used in some proofing devices, although it's slowly fading from the market.

4. Gravure

This method, also known as rotogravure, involves engraving an image onto a printing cylinder. The ink is applied to the cylinder and then transferred to the paper. Gravure printing is used for high-volume printing projects including newspapers, periodicals, and packaging.

In gravure printing, the image carrier is often a steel cylinder that has been electroplated with copper (some modern gravure presses use aluminum or plastic). On the gravure cylinder, a negative of the picture to be printed is formed as a pattern of cells, which can be of uniform or varied depth, with as many as 50,000 or more cells per square inch. The image portions are rendered in recess, while the non-image areas are rendered in relief. The image can be created analogue or digitally; traditionally, a photographic film negative of the image is placed over the gravure cylinder and the image areas are either engraved onto the gravure cylinder using a laser or diamond tool or chemically etched in place (with the help of a chemical etching tool).

5. Screen Printing

This Printing Press in Dubai method uses a screen, which is a woven piece of cloth, as the name indicates. This mesh is covered with a non-permeable substance in some locations. Ink may be pushed through the mesh onto a substrate in the remaining free regions. The benefit of screen printing is that the recipient's surface does not need to be flat, and the ink may cling to a variety of materials, including paper, fabrics, glass, ceramics, wood, and metal.

Choosing the most appropriate printing method

How do you choose the optimal printing method for a job? The factors below can help evaluate which printing method (offset, flexo, digital, gravure, screen printing, etc.) is suitable for a certain task.

1. Run-length - How many copies are required? Some printing methods, such as flexo or gravure, entail a significant initial investment. They are only economically viable for huge jobs. In most circumstances, a run length of one – implying that each print is unique – means that digital printing is the only accessible or cheap technique. 

2. Deadline - When must the printed job be delivered? When you need something quickly, digital is impossible to beat. The startup time is quick, and there is no need to wait for press sheets to dry. The very big web presses used for printing newspapers, on the other hand, feature integrated folding and cutting technology. This also shortens the time required to deliver a final product. The printing company's workload and schedule have a greater influence on timely delivery than the printing machines they utilize. When a firm is busy, your task will most likely take longer. Your cards will have to wait until Friday if they only print business cards on Friday.                             

3. Size - What is the size of the document that has to be printed? The size of the sheets that pass through printing machines is obviously limited by physical limits. For some applications, such as posters, the printer may get around this constraint by tiling - breaking up the artwork into smaller portions that are printed individually.                              

4. Substrate - What kind of paper should the work be printed on? On paper, every printing process may be utilized, but not all of them can print on cardboard, glass, metal, ceramic tiles, or other materials. A workaround is often to print a coating on the substrate first, which permits the ink to adhere. It's also vital to think about whether the topic being printed on is fully flat or not. For example, offset printing can only be done on flat surfaces. On the other hand, pad printing was created to print on curved surfaces.

5. Design - What exactly does one need to print? The designer's intentions or the format of a document can also aid in determining which is the most important.        

6. Requirements for completion - What further must be done once the work has been printed? Some printing methods have finishing choices. Digital presses, for example, may have a binding unit, as can big web offset presses. Some sorts of finishing are easier to do with certain printing methods.

7. Availability - Which printing systems are available? Even though work is excellent for xerography, a printer may nonetheless print it using offset since that is the equipment he has available.

8. Budget - What is the budget for printing the job? Many of the preceding requirements do not rule out the possibility of multiple printing processes. Each step, however, will have a cost connected with it, which may or may not be included in the budget for Printing Press in Dubai.

For highly specialized purposes, additional printing processes were created. Flock printing, letterpress, intaglio, pad printing, and thermography are examples.