Techniques of Printing

There are several printing techniques that are employed to obtain top quality images. Let us give you a brief overview of these different techniques:

Liquid ink-jet
Here small droplets of ink are thrown through small tubes called nozzles. These nozzles lie in a row on the print head and move across the paper. For color printing, the four basic colors used are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black also known as CMYK. Thus printing a color document takes place in a single process. There are various techniques used to squirt ink on paper, like continuous ink jet, drop on demand and bubble jet. While this form of printing is cheap and produces good colors, it needs special paper for optimum quality.

Solid ink-jet
This works on principals similar to liquid ink-jet, except that ink is stored in solid wax sticks, which are melted in a small reservoir. The liquid ink is then squirted to paper, where the colored material becomes solid again. While this is good for producing graphics on standard paper, it may not be the ideal choice if you are looking for fast printing solutions.

Laser printing
Here laser beams sweep across a photosensitive cylinder, creating electrostatic latent images. These images are then passed in a special powder (toner), whose particles are attracted by electric charges on the cylinder. The image is transferred onto paper by electric voltage difference between the paper and the cylinder. The image is finally fixed by heating and pressure processes. Repeating the process for each basic color produces color documents.

Thermal Wax Transfer
Thermal wax transfer uses special colored films known as transfer rolls made of wax-based material. This material melts due to controlled heating resistors at local points and transfers colored wax by contact onto paper. For color printing, the process is repeated thrice, once for each basic color. While this method is fast and produces precise dots and excellent color, it needs expensive paper for good results.

Dye Sublimation
Dye sublimation provides top-level quality in printing images. Here coloring agents are contained consecutively in a transfer roll that is passed across a thermal print head. This print head consists of many heating elements, which heat the dyes. The dyes become hot and diffuse to the target paper's surface, which is specially designed to absorb the vaporous dye. The amount of dye transferring onto the paper depends on the temperature and more die can be transferred at higher temperatures. Thus the intensity of color can be controlled. While here the photographic quality is high, the price of transfer roll and paper are also high.

Digital Printing
Digital Printing is the reproduction of digital images on surfaces like photographic paper, film, vinyl, cloth or plastic. It involves the transmission of images from the computer to the printing press equipment.

We at Ambient Graphics are a leading name in providing Digital Printing Solutions to our clients. Kindly browse through our services and in case of any query please feel free to get in touch with us.