At Ideal Printers, offset lithographic printing (or ‘offset’ for short) is the backbone of our printing operation, and a process we have perfected since our doors opened in 1979. Like many people, you probably have one question—what in the world is ‘offset lithographic printing’? At its core, it’s a printing process that revolves around the principle that water and ink (vegetable oil-based) don’t mix. Here’s a quick rundown:
To start, image information is laser-etched onto a thin metal plate. This plate is then loaded onto a print cylinder inside of the printing press. With each revolution of this cylinder, the plate passes under a water roller, which wets the non-image area of the plate, and ink roller, which applies ink to the image area. The ink on the image area of the plate is then transferred (or offset) as a mirror image onto a rubber blanket cylinder, which is then transferred (as a right-facing image), to the substrate or printing surface—like paper.
To achieve full color printing, this process occurs four or more times (each metal plate contains different etchings for cyan, yellow, magenta, and black inks, plus any specialty colors in your design). The result is stunning, crisp, and beautiful print, that is unmatched by any other printing process.