Spring Breeze Twenty Years

Chapter 945 Printing Industry

Xiao Wei asked, "How long have you been doing this?"

Liang Dongmei said, "Not long after, the factory that used to belong to my dad, which made shoe boxes for Nanta, was separated from us after I got married. My dad supported us and gave us the factory, and then he went out to start a new business. We didn't want to make shoe boxes and compete with my dad for business, so we went into the food packaging business."

Chen Lei said, "Chairman Zhang, don't worry, I'll definitely get the job done for you. The machine operators are all top-notch."

Xiao Wei asked, "What kind of machines are you? What colors?"

Chen Lei opened his mouth to speak, but Liang Dongmei slapped him and said with a smile, "We're a semi-open monochrome machine, 01, but we can definitely do a good job. If we don't do a good job, you won't pay us, right? We're planning to expand our factory and want to get a 08 machine, but we can't afford any more expensive machines."

Xiao Wei asked, "Do you offer blister packaging? Do you offer lightweight printing?"

Liang Dongmei said, "We have blister packaging and ABC printing, but not light printing. There are factories that specialize in light printing, but I can help you find one. As for the price, it will definitely be cheaper for us to print it. I can give you the original price."

Xiao Wei said, "We print quite a lot of things, such as various forms, notepads, envelopes, two-part and three-part forms, and inventory control slips."

Liang Dongmei said, "The more you print, the easier it is to negotiate the price. The price is very low among us in the same industry for commissioned printing. Don't worry, Chairman Zhang, I definitely won't charge extra. If there are any quality problems, just come to me. It's definitely no worse than Xinhua."

Xinhua Printing is the largest printing plant in China. Its printing presses are all German-made, making it the leader in the domestic printing industry. It is the designated production unit for newspapers, periodicals, and books from all over the country, and all kinds of printed materials for government agencies are printed here.

However, being the boss also has its drawbacks: high prices and long turnaround times. There are too many jobs, so you have to wait in line.

Private printing companies emerged one after another in the early 90s. Their disadvantages were small factories and poor machines, but their advantages were flexible pricing and fast turnaround times.

There are several common printing methods: offset printing, gravure printing, and letterpress printing.

Offset printing is further divided into light printing and regular printing. Light printing is used for printing forms and newspapers because the paper is thin, the pressure cannot be too high, and it can only print monochrome and simple patterns and lines. The rest of what we see are regular printing, such as GG flyers, colored paper bags, packaging boxes, etc.

Gravure printing is generally used for printing plastic products. Most of the plastic packaging we come into contact with is gravure. Like letterpress printing, the pattern is directly engraved on the surface of a metal roller. It is very delicate and can be ruined by a slight bump.

Their advantage is that they can be printed indefinitely without limiting the length of the printed material.

Products printed using letterpress printing include books and newspapers.

Offset printing is similar to photo printing, requiring exposure, development, and fixing. It is cheaper than embossing and debossing, and can produce much finer colors and patterns. However, it has requirements on the size of the printed material and is divided into full-size, half-size, quarter-size, eighth-size, and even sixteen-size machines.

The machines come in single-color, two-color, four-color, and five-color versions, and now there are six-color, seven-color, and even 10+N-color machines, which are basically indistinguishable to the naked eye.

Basic printing uses three primary colors plus black, which is a four-color press, also called a full-color press. When we create images on a computer, we only use these four colors.

A printing press that uses more than four colors is called spot color printing. This means that a pre-mixed, specified color is added instead of relying on the machine's automatic synthesis, allowing the printing of the desired product color. 10+N means adding six or more spot colors, such as gold, silver, orange, and green, and fluorescent or coating effects can also be added to make the product more vibrant.

The 01 machine is the lowest-end offset printing machine and also the most common machine in China. It uses manual paper feeding for single-color printing and has a relatively slow printing speed, about three to five seconds per sheet. If you want to use this machine to print photos, you need to repeat the printing process four or five times, which depends entirely on the operator's skill, because the overprinting process is very easy to blur and produce ghosting.

The 08 machine is also monochrome, but it has automatic paper feeding and is much faster than the 01 machine, about one sheet per second or even faster.

Two-color, four-color, and five-color printing machines are essentially like adding a stand, which means arranging several 08 machines in a row. The paper is automatically fed here, and then the paper passes through a row of printing rollers to become the finished product. Therefore, the machines take up a lot of space. Generally, a five-color machine is more than ten meters long and requires at least sixteen meters of space. Moreover, the ground must be level, the load-bearing capacity must reach three tons per square meter, and there are strict requirements for indoor temperature and humidity.

Such machines print at extremely high speeds, exceeding the seconds; they can print dozens of pages in a single turn. All printing operations incur a start-up fee for small print runs, with better machines incurring higher start-up fees due to their high printing speed and resulting waste.

For example, a trial print is needed before the official printing. A 01 machine can handle about ten sheets, while a five-color machine may need several hundred sheets or more.

The best printing presses are all imported, and the most common ones in China are Japanese brands, such as Roland. The best are Heidelberg from Germany, that's undisputed. We invented printing, but they popularized it. There's a joke in the printing industry: "We use Heidelberg."

Digital printing technology emerged in 01, with Kyocera of Japan being a prime example. Digital technology can even print single sheets, but it cannot replace traditional offset printing due to its slower printing speed. However, it significantly reduces the overall cost of printing, such as the cost of proofing.

There is another printing technique called screen printing. It is low-cost, easy to learn, and doesn't require much from the workspace. The downside is that it is slow. Although there are now fully automatic screen printing machines, the printing speed is still very slow. This is determined by the ink used in screen printing.

However, screen printing has a wide range of applications and can print on everything, including cloth, paper, metal, glass, and plastic. It can produce flat, three-dimensional, and curved images, and offers many effects and characteristics such as overprinting, 3D printing, etching, foaming, and wire drawing.

Many things in our lives are printed this way, including clothing, cups, tables, chairs, shoes, hats, and appliances. Its biggest advantage is its ease of operation; one person can do it at home, requiring no specific space, and even the tools can be made at home.

In the Tang Dynasty, my country already used silk screen printing technology to print patterns on clothing; this is not the technology we use today.

The key to all printing techniques lies in plate making, which I won't go into detail here.

……

Xiao Wei said, "You know birthday cakes, right? We need to make our standard packaging, as well as custom-designed packaging, and also tote bags, food boxes, birthday hats, cutlery, etc. Can you make those? We also need bread packaging, mooncake boxes, and tote bags. It's quite a lot; I'm just worried you won't be able to handle it all. How big is your factory?"

Liang Dongmei said, "We have three 01 machines, complete with shell pressing machines, paper cutters, and we can handle plate making and design ourselves."

Xiao Wei smiled and said, "Actually, I quite enjoy dealing with private businesses; they're easy to communicate with and flexible. But I really don't have confidence in you guys. How did you get in touch with us to make tote bags? Around the Mid-Autumn Festival, right?"

Liang Dongmei blushed slightly and said, "The job you were working on was originally assigned to another factory, but they couldn't finish it, so they brought it to us. Your phone number was on the order form, which is why I contacted them. This is normal for us in this business; we all share jobs."

(End of this chapter)