Sunday, August 3, 2008

Printer Machines for High Quality Postcards

By Jacques Di Salvia


Promoting your company's products and services by using postcards as the medium is a very cost effective way to reach your potential customer base. Postcards offer two of the biggest advantages such as cost and convenience.

The real meaning of success in any promotional campaign is to be able to reach the targeted sectors of the market. In this instance, the quality of the printed postcards plays an integral part in the success of the campaign. Therefore, if your design and information is not of a very high standard then it is more than likely that your output will reflect that too. The success of your campaign also relies on the output and so if the printing machine that is used does not print in high-resolution graphics then all of your efforts will seem to have been wasted.

Earlier, postcards used to get printed only in offset presses, but advancement of printing technology and introduction of digital presses have changed the scenario. Digital presses offer more flexibilities and options without sacrificing on quality. You can choose from the wide range of design template as per your choice and merge your mailing list with the design to be printed in the final postcards.

Digital printer manufactures offer various features and attachments in their digital presses. Canon, hp and Kodak are leaders in this field because their machines deliver high-quality prints every time. Their machines are built in such a way to accommodate paper transfer and printing. All of the operations are simply controlled electronically by a control panel.

The paper that is used to print the postcards is referred to as the stock. It comes in various finishes and thickness such as; a matte, gloss or pear finish. Most printing machines can print up to A3-sized paper. The speed at which it prints is around 4000 sheets of A4 sized paper per hour using four other colors. If it is printing in black and white then the quantity is 16000 copies using A4 sheets.

The postcard design can be directly downloaded from the Internet and can be viewed in the monitor of the control panel. It is possible to queue up jobs one after another based on priority.

Many postcards printing machines offer the option of both side printing at one go that delivers the finished postcards at a lesser turn around time. Variable data printing is the most powerful feature of these printing machines. These digital presses can make each and every postcard customized and unique. That is why digital printing is gaining growing acceptance in postcards printing segment.

After the printing is done, the printed sheet is given the final shape of postcard by cutting and trimming. However, it may be sent to other operations like UV varnishing, embossing, and leafing in case special effects are needed. Nevertheless, digital printing is recommended for short-run jobs and having requirement for variable data printing, but for long run jobs offset printing is still preferred.

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