Many important operations in a business such as maintaining flow of information within the company and marketing the products of the company need printing service. Hence it is helpful to know about the basic working of the commonly used printing process called offset printing.

The users and the printers like offset printing due to its cost effectiveness for printing of large number of prints. This is the reason good printing service providers suggest the use of offset printing for bulk prints.

This printing technique uses oil-based ink, which is not soluble in water. The offset printing is so called because the designs are transferred indirectly from the plates to the paper by use of rubber blankets as the agents.

First step is to develop the graphics. Film negatives were employed in the past for making images and then reproducing them to aluminum based printing plates. But, a modern printing company would now prepare the plates directly by making use of an image setting system. The subsequent step is to transfer the plate on to a cylinder such that it is spot on. Next, the water is spread on the image plates, which is followed by the ink. While the ink gets fixed to the image, the water gets stuck to that part of the plate which has no image so that the ink does not spread beyond the image.

The image is then transferred from the plates to the rubber blanket rolled on another cylinder, so that it is inverted. The image is inverted to its right side by transferring the image to sheets that have been cut according to the need and are put on a different cylinder.

The task of printing is completed by the printing company by consolidating the printed sheets using staples or paste or in any other way as per the requirements of the client.

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