Friday, August 1, 2008

Brochure and Postcard Printing: Postcard Printer Machines

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.

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.

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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