Wet offset printing and waterless offset printing
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Wet offset printing is the most common printing process in the printing industry today. The basic principle is to use the ink-and-wash balance of the printing area (ink) on the printing plate and the non-printing area (water). The key is to maintain the stability and control of the ink balance.
Waterless offset printing uses a silicon coating on the printing plate as a non-printing area to remove ink balance control and eliminate the use of water as a medium.
From the point of view of printing quality, printing without water is used to make the printing offset of waterless offset more sharp and better. Waterless offset has the ability to achieve higher line counts and contrasts.
From the standpoint of print durability, wet offset printing is more compatible than waterless offset printing. Water can be thought of as a cleaning plate or ink path, a bit like a self-cleaning function when printing.
In waterless printing plates, dust and paper dust can damage the waterless offset printed silicon coating, making the selection of substrates and working environment more demanding.
In general, waterless offset printing requires more demanding printer maintenance and operator skill. It is a slight mistake in the process, and the print quality may also vary greatly. The problem of ink temperature, although after years of technological development, waterless offset printing is still a very complicated process. Every process requires perfect control to achieve high print quality.
At printing speeds above 150 meters per minute, wet offset printing requires a chill roll that cools the heat accumulated in the printing set, which can affect the performance of the ink and the density of the ink.
Waterless offset printing requires a cooling roll to cool the ink path at any printing speed and to cool the plate at the center of the plate roll because the temperature of the ink is extremely sensitive to controlling print quality. The working temperature of the ink is limited to a very narrow range, only 3~4 °C. Depending on the supplier, above or below this temperature, the ink becomes unstable and the print quality is affected. In order to achieve better control of printing results, air conditioning temperature control is required in the factory.
From the point of view of consumables, there is only one supplier of waterless offset printing plates, and there are not many ink suppliers. The suppliers of wet offset printing consumables are actually numerous. For consumables costs, because waterless offset printing is not much in the industry, consumable costs are significantly higher than wet offset printing. In some cases, the price of inks and plates can be three times higher.
Waterless offset printing claims to reduce machine waste by eliminating the need to handle ink balance. On the other hand, modern wet offset printing can be fully automated to adjust the ink and water treatment, which also makes the ink balance control more accurate and faster, and is also comparable to waterless offset printing. In fact, the process of controlling the ink supply will largely affect the performance of wet offset printing and waterless offset printing.
Since there is no water, waterless offset printing can achieve good printing results in a short printing turnaround time, provided that conditions such as temperature and cleaning are necessary, and the basic parameters have been correctly set.
For substrates that are not known, wet offset printing still takes more time and produces more waste. When repeating the same print job on a known substrate, the advanced offset printing unit can store the existing ink parameters and can perform repeated printing with a shorter preparation time and similar to waterless offset printing.