Printed at 1200 dpi and 266 lines per inch, digital printing is a four color process (plus white) that is capable of hitting over 10,000,000 colors.
Manufacturers, product decorators, and ad specialty companies have a need for durable, aesthetically pleasing labels that can also be produced on affordable short runs. It seems like a lot to ask, but it really isn’t – at least not anymore. Today, full color digital printing is the name of the game, offering numerous benefits over traditional spot color product decoration.
What is Spot Color Product Decoration?
Spot color printing is done one color at a time and is primarily used in the screen printing process. While there is no limit to the number of colors that can be spot printed, the restrictions come from the process itself.
- Time: Because each color is printed individually, it takes quite a bit of time to print intricate, multi-colored images.
- Accuracy: The accuracy of spot color printing greatly diminishes with curved substrates, such as water bottles, where there can be shifting between the colors.
- Quality: With spot color product decoration, the quality of the final image can vary greatly from product to product.
What is Digital Printing?
Printed at 1200 dpi and 266 lines per inch, digital printing is a four color process (plus white) that is capable of hitting over 10,000,000 colors and fluid gradients to produce photo-quality images. These digital images are printed on the underside of a polyester film and coated with the proper adhesive for their destined substrate – metal, plastic, ceramics, etc. The film is then slit into various widths, wound on cardboard cores, and shipped to the customer. Now, the digital image, known as a digital heat transfer, is ready to be applied to your product using conventional hot stamp equipment – just heat and pressure.
“Being digital, an almost endless array of process colors can be built using the cmyk+w spectrum,” said Matt Regan, CDigital senior vice president.
It is no wonder why digital heat transfers have become one of the most popular methods for decorating plastics, glass, metal and many other substrates. Additional benefits of digital heat transfers include:
- Because the process is digital, set up is quick and easy.
- The process is dry, requiring no cure time.
- Variable data is easily incorporated from image to image.
- With digital transfers, short run production is not only possible, but affordable.
- Digital heat transfers are perfect for a number of different substrates, including plastic, glass, metal, ceramics, and much more.
Full Color Digital Heat Transfers from CDigital
Since 2001, CDigital has been an innovator in developing new systems and processes for using digital print technology to produce full color digital heat transfers for the product decoration industry. Our print technology is by far the most cost effective full color print solution in the product decoration industry today.
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If you have any questions about Full Color Digital Printing or Digital Heat Transfers, you can contact CDigital by calling 410-646-7800. You can also follow our Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pintrest, and YouTube accounts for our latest news.
