Latest Label Printing Technologies

Label is one of the important parts of any product. It is obligatory to stick labels on certain products. While labels serves as one of the effective marketing materials which highlights the product brand. Thus, label printing has great demands from various manufacturing industries. The printing machine industry has brought plenty of label printing machines for them. Label printers are different from regular printers. If you want to know more about label printers and technologies used in label printing, just go ahead and discover it.

About Label Printers

Label printers are specially designed to print labels from small to the size of several inches. Running sheets or rolls are used for label printers. You need not calibrate the label to print on label printer. These printers do not have problems like paper jamming. Label printers are portable devices which can be placed on the desk at ease. The market offers variety of label printing including 4 color printers. The printers are designed using different label printing technologies. Let’s see the technologies used in label printers.

Label Printing Technologies

There are two main technologies used in label printers. These technologies are widely used as per the application of label printing processes. These technologies include –

• Flexographic printing technology – It is the traditional label printing technology which uses ink and flexible relief plates for printing. The flexographic plate is made of rubber or polymer. It is raised with text or image which is attached to the cylinder. The technology uses three types of inks namely water based, UV curing and solvent based inks. These inks are low viscosity and hence facilitate fast printing. The most important feature of this technology is that you can print on any substrate including metallic films, polymer films etc. Typical applications of flexographic printers include printing on carton boxes, self-adhesive labels, shopping bags, wallpapers etc. The technology advancements include improvements in the methods of plate creation and plate materials, ink qualities. The features like enhanced printing quality, cost effectiveness and faster printing are responsible for wide use of these technology devices in the industry.
• Thermal printing technology – As the name suggests the technology uses thermal print head to print images on the label surface. There are two methods of thermal printing such as –

• Direct thermal printing technique – The heat sensitive media(paper) is used. The front side of the label is heat sensitive and back side is self-adhesive. The thermal print head prints the image as label surface area turns black. This technique is widely used for printing bar codes, name tags and price labels for various products.
• Thermal transfer technology –This technique includes a thermal transfer ribbon in between the label and thermal printer head. The heat from printing head melts the pigments on the ribbon and these pigments are absorbed by the label. This technique provides better quality and durability than direct thermal printing. Thermal transfer printers allow printing on wide variety of media like nylon, polyethylene, fabric etc.

These label printing technologies and advancements have improved the label printing speed, quality and reduced printing costs substantially.

Modern Digital Printing Machines For Fast And Quality Printing

Today, Information Technology (IT) has seized all the industries and work processes with advanced technologies. Similarly, printing arena has been expanding its horizon offering a wide variety of printing machines according to user requirements. Whether it is a small or big business, whether it is manufacturing industry or service industry, printing requirements are the part of these businesses. The printing industry serves printing options to cater all their needs. If you are looking for the printing machine for your business or small office, this article talks about printing machines available on the market today.

Customer Oriented Printing Machine Market

You will find the market flooding with tremendous variety of printing machines. Basically these machines have been developed based on three technologies –

• Offset printing – Offset printing machines are used for mass printing applications in publications or print media. The widely used offset printing machines include sheet fed offset printing machines and web offset machines which need large paper rolls for printing.
   
• Letter Press printing – This is the traditional technique of printing and some letter press printing machines are still in use as this technology is cost effective and suits some specific printing requirements.
   
• Digital printing – These latest technology printing machines offer excellent variety to suit almost all printing requirements. Digital printing technology has brought magical change in printing industry. It improved printing speed, quality, convenience and flexibility. Today, you will find different digital printing machines established to suit various printing requirements. Here are some of the digital printing machines that are widely used for different applications –  

• Production and digital press printers - These printers are specially designed for mass printing requirements of media or publications. Various machines provide high quality color printing facilities.
• Laser/ Inkjet printers – These printing machines are available for a wide variety of applications right from commercial printing to personal printing requirements.
• Thermal transfer printers – These printing machines include hot stick and thermal wax printers.
• Imagesetters and Platsetters – These devices are used for image films and plates printing applications.

                     
Besides these digital printing machines, there are various other printing machines designed to suit different applications. Label printing machines are one of them. Using label printing machines, one can print on different media like wood, metal, cloth, plastic etc. Label printers also show a wide variety depending on the print media. CD printers, sticker/ roll printers, vinyl printers, banner printers etc. are also some digital printing machines offering excellent printing services.

The digital printing machinery industry has featured with new dimension that is 3D printing technology. Now, there are a variety of commercial to personalized 3D printers available in the market. 3D printers are different from all other digital printing devices in that these printers create 3D objects according to its design. 3D printers are used to design prototype, model or for production of articles. These printers use ABS plastic and other materials for 3D printing. Thus, digital printing machinery market is full of a wide variety of printing devices to fulfill various printing requirements. Just name it and you will get the best suitable printing machine for you.