Lithographic Printing – From Plate To Print

At Asset Print, we are able to meet all your Litho printing demands including anything from full colour, high gloss marketing material to one colour street signs. This is thanks to our well-priced, high-quality, quick turn-around lithographic printing service based in Cape Town, South Africa. We even have eco-friendly litho printing options that include the use of recycled paper and environmentally friendly lithographic inks.

Please feel free to contact us regarding all of your Lithographic printing needs.

The Lithographic Printing Process

Lithographic printing, also called Litho Printing is best suited to medium to large sized print runs of any sort of high volume materials such as brochures, maps and business cards to posters, office stationery, books and newsletters. In fact, lithography is the printing method of choice for all high volume text printing industries.

Lithographic printing uses plastic plates that are rendered with a negative photographic image of the artwork/ text in question. The emulsion that the image is rendered in is oil-based. This plate is then affixed to a press where two sets of rollers apply water and ink to the plate. The image emulsion absorbs the ink and repels the water.

The plate is then applied to a rubber-surfaced blanket which then absorbs the ink and squeezes off the water. The image is transferred from the rubber blanket to the paper or material on which the printing is required.

Modern Lithographic Printing

With the introduction of desktop publishing, it is now possible for type and images to be easily modified on a PC or Mac. This is thanks to the use of modern digital imagesetters that allow our team in Cape Town to skip the intermediate printing step of photographing the page layout and use computer to plate printing. This speeds up the printing process and allows us to make even the tightest print deadlines. Get a Quote from us today.