A Brief Look at Book Printing Technologies

Books are the most prized possessions of mankind. They have played the most important role in keeping the social, cultural, philosophical, religious, spiritual and scientific spirit of the humanity alive. It is a fairly known fact that texts and clay tablets had been there for a very long time but access to them was restricted to the aristocracy and royalty. The introduction of printing technology changed everything forever. Years after years, and generations after generations, the treasured knowledge of books has managed to make its way through the once mighty intelligentsia and elite literati to the hands of a common middle class man. All this couldn’t have been accomplished without the contributions of printing technology. With time, the face of printing technology has also changed. Multitudes of technological advancements have transformed the way books are printed and distributed. For more information visit at: Rottapritindia.com

Main Techniques for Book Printing
Given below are the 3 distinct technologies deployed to print books, all of which are widely used. Let’s take a brief look at each of these technologies and figure out where they come into play.

1. Letterpress Printing: It is a technique of relief printing using a printing press. This process involves producing multiple copies by repeated direct impressions of inked, raised plates on sheets or continuous roll of paper. Over time Letterpress technology made way for larger automated presses.
   You can imagine for your self the might of this printing method that overshadowed all other types of printing techniques for over 4 centuries.
2. Offset — The dawn of the twentieth century witnessed the Offset printing’s development by the accidental discovery of an image transferred to paper by a rubber covered cylinder was actually sharper and better than the image from the original type. This offset image gave rise to the name offset printing.
3. Digital — Today, Digital printing is the fastest-growing form of book printing technique deployed by the Book printing machine manufacturers. In this Printing technique, separate and coordinated digital files for the book’s cover and interior text block are maintained by the Computer servers .

The files are downloaded on to the printing end of the press and imaged with toner in the same way your high end copier images copies at a request from the computer instruction or a operator . The pages that have been created are combined with a color-imaged cover. The entire book is glued together and trimmed.

The fact that digital printing is modeled to create one copy of a book at a time is the most significant difference between letterpress and offset printing, on one hand, and digital, on the other. The older book printing machines produced books in stages and were efficient only when producing multiple copies at a time.

Conclusion: It can be concluded that letterpress printing is the best form of book printing for very fine, limited edition collector’s books. Web offset is ideal printing technique for mass market and for churning out very high volume books and for print runs where quality is not an issue. It is best to deploy Sheet-fed offset for print runs that go over 500 copies or where high quality reproductions are required. Digital printing is a good option where you have no need of an inventory of books or where print runs are very short. For Book printing machine suppliers and Book printing machine exporters need to keep these facts in mind if they want their businesses to prosper.