Printing Terms Archives - Alan Northrop Label Printers | Label & Digital Printing Services

Thermographic printing

Heather Northrop — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:06:20 +0000

There are two types of thermographic printing, both of which rely on heat to print onto the material.

The simplest type is where the material to be printed has been coated with a substance that changes colour when heated. This variation of thermal printing is used in older model fax machines and used in most shop till receipt printers. This is called direct thermal printing.

More complex is thermal ink transfer printing that melts print off a ribbon straight onto the material to be printed.

Common uses of thermal transfer printing include:

* Barcode Labels
* Printing Plastics

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Hot foil stamping

Heather Northrop — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:53:07 +0000

Hot foil stamping is a process whereby a die is mounted and heated, foil is positioned above the material and a combination of heat, dwell time, pressure and stripping time determine the quality of the stamp. This type of stamping is environmentally friendly as it does not use solvents or inks and does not create any harmful vapors.

Success in hot stamping relies on the quality of the original artwork. In order to get the best result, the original artwork should be as high quality as possible. The better the artwork, the better the end product.

Examples of products for which we use this process are:

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Flexographic printing

Heather Northrop — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:51:54 +0000

Flexography (often abbreviated to flexo) is a form of printing process using a flexible relief plate. This is a modern version of the traditional letterpress and can be used for printing on a wide range of materials including plastic, metallic films, cellophane, and paper. It is widely used in the food and other industries for printing on non-porous materials.

A major advantage of flexography over lithography is that it allows for a much greater choice of inks and is capable of printing on a variety of different materials such as plastic, foil, acetate film, brown paper, and many other packaging materials. Flexographic inks generally have a low viscosity. This enables faster drying and, as a result, faster production, which results in lower costs.

Examples of products that we print using Flexo at Alan Northrop are:

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