Monday, July 14, 2008

Printer Machines for High Quality Postcards

By Jacques Di Salvia

Postcards are perhaps the most cost effective means of promoting your company and the products and services your company offers to your prospective customers. The biggest advantages of postcards are two 'C's - Cost and Convenience.

For any promotional campaign to be successful it must penetrate directly into the targeted portion of the marketplace. The quality of the printed postcards is an essential element. As the saying goes, 'garbage in - garbage out' so, therefore, you want to be sure that your input and processing requirements will produce the highest quality of output. One of the factors that are eminent to the quality of your output is the postcard-printing machine. Your design and the value of the paper that is used for the printing process can be of the highest standards but if the printing machine is incapable of printing in high-resolution graphics then your project may have a setback.

Offset presses were used in the past when printing postcards but nowadays more and more printing companies use digital presses. They like the flexibility and options that the machines provide and the output is of the highest quality. From the many design templates to the ability of merging your mailing lists with the design are just two of the primary benefits when using a digital press.

Today, there are quite a few digital printer manufacturers who offer different features and attachments in their digital presses. Global leaders like hp, Canon, or Kodak produce machines capable of delivering high-quality prints. These machines have sophisticated systems for paper transfer and printing. The entire operations are controlled electronically via a control panel.

Different stocks of Gloss, Matte, and Pearl finish and of varied thickness (GSM) can be used for printing. All machines are capable of printing up to A3-sized papers. The printing speed is usually around 4000 sheets of A4 sized paper per hour for four different colors (CMYK) printing and 16000 copies of A4 sheets for black and white printing.

The Internet can be used to download your postcard design and by using the control panel you can view the output on the monitor. Being placed in the printer queue one right after the other is a way to prioritize printing jobs.

If you are looking for a quick turnaround time when it comes to printing your postcards, some printing machines can print on both sides of the postcards. The most powerful of all printing features is the variable data. They have the ability to create customized and unique postcards. For this reason, digital printing is overtaking the marketplace when it comes to postcard printing.

In order to give the printed postcard a shape to match the style of the design the postcards are cut and trimmed. In addition, when adding other affects like UV varnishing, embossing and leafing, these procedures will be done in another area of the printing process. Most people prefer digital printing for short jobs and still like to use the offset printing method for longer print jobs.

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