Thursday, July 31, 2008

Brochure and Postcard Printing: Postcard Printer Machines

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.

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.

In the past, postcard printing was done mostly on offset presses but as technology advanced they now use digital presses. These newer presses are more flexible and can provide you with more options without sacrificing the quality of the printing process. There are a variety of design templates for you to choose from and the program supports merging your mailing lists with the design for the final print.

There are many features offered by digital printer manufacturers for their digital presses. High-quality prints are always produced on machines from global leaders like Kodak, hp and Canon. Their sophisticated systems incorporate paper transfer and printing technology. All of these operations are handled through a control panel electronically.

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 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.

Cutting and trimming the postcard is the final step in giving the postcard a particular shape after it has been printed. If you would like to add some additional affects then it may go to the other departments like embossing, UV varnishing and leafing. Although digital printing is a preference for most when utilizing the variable data printing method offset printing is still a favourite for long run jobs.

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