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Printing Types
Letterpress printing
This is the original printing process that was introduced way back in the fifteenth century. It uses images on the plate that are slightly raised from the surface (like a rubber stamp). Few printers offer fine letterpress anymore.
The letterpress process is referred to as a "relief" process because the printed image is produced from a plate in which the image area is slightly raised above the non-image surface of the plate. It is a direct printing method in that the inked plate applies the image directly to the substrate. Letterpress is one of the oldest printing processes and was the most widely used process until the middle of the 20th century when advances in other printing processes made it obsolete. Flexography, which is an updated version of letterpress, is now the dominate relief printing process.
The letterpress process utilizes an ink that is thick in consistency and is well suited for relief printing. A set of rollers deposits the ink on the raised image area of the type or plate, but ink is not deposited on the non-image areas. For this reason, letterpress plates do not require any dampening in order to keep the non-image areas free of ink. This makes the process a simple one and allows for consistent results, but the process still cannot match the quality of more sophisticated print processes.
Because of the popularity of other printing processes, letterpress is a fast diminishing printing method. It is still used for publishing a few small town newspapers, several types of labels, packaging materials, and some narrow web printing.
An area where letterpress has greater usage than it does with actual printing is with some finishing operations. Old letterpress equipment is used for procedures such as embossing, die-cutting, numbering, perforating, and foil stamping. The types of products that can be finished using letterpress equipment include embossed business cards and government documents, die-cut labels and folders, numbered tickets and membership cards, perforated mailers, and foil stamped letterheads and invitations.
