Offset Printing & Lithography Printing Chicago

Offset Printing Overview & Difference From Digital Printing

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Offset printing, also called lithography printing, has been used in commercial applications since the early 20th century, and still today offers substantial advantages over other printing methods with regard to cost when considering high volume and precision printing.  MidAmerican Printing Systems, Inc. employs offset printing for our customers on our KBA 105 Rapida 6-color printing press, offering unparalleled speed and color accuracy on up to 29″ x 41″ sheets.

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The Offset Printing Process

Offset printing is based on the principle of separation, or repulsion of oil and water.  The image is etched onto a metal plate, and the oil-based ink adheres to the etched image, while water adheres to non-image area of the plate, repelling the oil-based inks.  The process is called offset printing due to the fact the image is pressed from the metal plate to a rubber “stamp” roller, then applied to the paper, one color at a time (CMYK).

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Offset Printing Advantages

Cost.

Because the bulk of the cost of offset printing is incurred in creating the plate etching, economies of scale come into play, driving the cost per piece to drop precipitously.  The more you print, the cheaper (per piece) it becomes.

 

Quality.

With each color applied separately, the accuracy from color to color with offset printing ensures a consistently brilliant end-product.  Whether you are printing 100 or 100,000 pieces, your first and last delivered piece will be virtually indistinguishable from one another.

 

Formats.

Offset printing provides large-format printing, enabling jobs as large as movie posters down to business cards, and everything in between.  We run a large-format sheet-fed KBA 105 Rapida 6-color press, offering our customers extreme flexibility from small business cards and magnets to large wall posters (29″ x 41″).

 

How We Use Offset Printing

At MidAmerican Printing, our goal is to provide the best product for the best price to our customer, all in a timely fashion.  With this in mind, we use our highly-capable offset printing services to deliver high-volume and high-quality prints of brochures, annual reports, marketing collateral, posters, business forms, newsletters, mailers, books, stationary and envelopes.

While offset printing produces high-quality and accurate prints on small, medium, and large volume print jobs, our flexibility as a full-service print shop allows us to split jobs between our precision digital printing and offset printing services, ensuring the greatest cost effectiveness and bringing the greatest value to our valued customers.