WOODBLOCK PRINTING

In woodblock printmaking, the parts of the wooden block which should not appear in the final
print are removed from the block by cutting them away with knifes. For printing, the remaining
raised parts of the block are inked and a paper is rubbed on it by hand with a tool or the paper is
printed with a press, thus creating a side-inverted impression. This method, which also includes
the techniques of wood engraving and lino cut, is called relief printmaking.

TECHNIQUE

Wood

Recommended woods for detailed designs are hard woods from fruit trees like cherry or pear.
Easier to cut is alder wood, or the soft basswood. Also some plywood can be used, but tends to
sliver.

Transferring the design

The design can either be drawn directly onto the block or transferred with the help of carbon
paper.

In the Asian tradition, the design is done on a special thin paper, which is glued facedown onto
the block. Before cutting, the paper fibres are carefully rubbed off, leaving only the drawing on
the block.

Cutting

Several knifes can be used for cutting like pointed knifes for line cutting (in Japan with thehangi-
to, in China with the quan dao), u- and v-gouges and chisels. Today also some machines make
can be used to make the cutting easier. Knifes have to kept sharp by repeated sharpening.

Printing

In the Western tradition, oil-based ink is used for printing woodblocks. This is applied evenly in
a thin layer with a roller. The paper is place onto the inked block and hand-printed with a
rubbing tool or printed with a press. The ink sits as a layer on top of the paper.

MOVABLE TYPE

Movable type is the system of printing and typography that uses movable components to
reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual letters or punctuation).

The world's first known movable-type system for printing was created in China around 1040 AD
by Bi Sheng (990–1051) during the Song Dynasty; then the first metal movable-type system for
printing was made in Korea during the Goryeo Dynasty (around 1230). This led to the printing of
the Jikji in 1377—today the oldest extant movable metal print book. The diffusion of both
movable-type systems were, however, limited: They were expensive, and required an enormous
amount of labour involved in manipulating the thousands of ceramic tablets, or in the case of
Korea, metal tablets.

Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and independently developed a
movable type system in Europe, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and
hand mould. Gutenberg was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead, tin and
antimony—the same components still used today.

Compared to woodblock printing, movable-type pagesetting was quicker and more durable for
alphabetic scripts. The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform,
leading to typography and fonts. The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible
(1455) established the superiority of movable type, and printing presses rapidly spread across
Europe, leading up to the Renaissance, and later all around the world.

PRINTING PRESS

A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print
medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. Typically used for texts, the
invention and spread of the printing press are widely regarded as the most influential events in
the second millennium AD,[1] revolutionizing the way people conceive and describe the world
they live in, and ushering in the period of modernity.

The mechanical systems involved were first assembled in the Holy Roman Empire by the
German Johannes Gutenberg around 1440, based on existing screw presses. Gutenberg, a
goldsmith by profession, developed a complete printing system, which perfected the printing
process through all its stages by adapting existing technologies to printing purposes, as well as
making groundbreaking inventions of his own. His newly devised hand mould made for the first
time possible the precise and rapid creation of metal movable type in large quantities, a key
element in the profitability of the whole printing enterprise.

PRINTING PROCESS

A printing press, in its classical form, is a standing mechanism, ranging from 5 to 7 feet long, 3
feet wide, and 7 feet tall. Type arranged into pages is placed in a frame to make a forme, which
itself is placed onto a flat stone or 'bed'. The type is inked, and the paper is held between a frisket
and tympan (two frames covered with paper or parchment). These are folded down, so that the
paper lies on the surface of the inked type. The bed is rolled under the platen, using a windlass
mechanism, and the impression is made with a screw that transmits pressure through the platen.
Then the screw is reversed, the windlass turned again to move the bed back to its original
position, the tympan and frisket raised and opened, and the printed sheet removed. Such presses
were always worked by hand. After around 1800, iron presses were developed, some of which
could be operated by steam power.

ETCHING PRINTING

Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal
surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal (the original process—in modern manufacturing
other chemicals may be used on other types of material). As an intaglio method of printmaking it
is, along with engraving, the most important technique for old master prints, and remains widely
used today.

ETCHING TECHNOLOGY

Printing the plate is done by covering the surface with ink, then rubbing the ink off the surface
with tarlatan cloth or newsprint, leaving ink in the roughened areas and lines. Damp paper is
placed on the plate, and both are run through a printing press; the pressure forces the paper into
contact with the ink, transferring the image (c.f., chine-collé). Unfortunately, the pressure also
subtly degrades the image in the plate, smoothing the roughened areas and closing the lines; a
copper plate is good for, at most, a few hundred printings of a strongly etched imaged before the
degradation is considered too great by the artist. At that point, the artist can manually restore the
plate by re-etching it, essentially putting ground back on and retracing their lines; alternately,
plates can be electro-plated before printing with a harder metal to preserve the surface. Zinc is
also used, because as a softer metal, etching times are shorter; however, that softness also leads
to faster degradation of the image in the press.

MEZZOTINT

Mezzotint is a printmaking process of the intaglio family, technically a drypoint method. It was
the first tonal method to be used, enabling half-tones to be produced without using line- or dot-
based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple. Mezzotint achieves tonality by
roughening the plate with thousands of little dots made by a metal tool with small teeth, called a
"rocker." In printing, the tiny pits in the plate hold the ink when the face of the plate is wiped
clean. A high level of quality and richness in the print can be achieved.

MEZZOTINT PRINTING TECHNIQUES

Plates can be mechanically roughened; one way is to rub fine metal filings over the surface with
a piece of glass; the finer the filings, the smaller the grain of the surface. Special roughening
tools called 'rockers' have been in use since at least the eighteenth century. The method
commonly in use today is to use a steel rocker approximately five inches wide, which has
between 45 and 120 teeth per inch on the face of a blade in the shape of a shallow arc, with a
wooden handle projecting upwards in a T-shape. Rocked steadily from side to side at the correct
angle, the rocker will proceed forward creating burrs in the surface of the copper. The plate is
then moved– either rotated by a set number of degrees or through 90 degrees according to
preference – and then rocked in another pass. This is repeated until the plate is roughened evenly
and will print a completely solid tone of black.

AQUATINT

Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching.

Intaglio printmaking makes marks on the matrix (in the case of aquatint, a copper or zinc plate)
that are capable of holding ink. The inked plate is passed through a printing press together with a
sheet of paper, resulting in a transfer of the ink to the paper. This can be repeated a number of
times, depending on the particular technique

Like etching, aquatint uses the application of acid to make the marks in the metal plate. Where
the etching technique uses a needle to make lines that print in black (or whatever colour ink is
used), aquatint uses powdered resin which is acid resistant in the ground to create a tonal effect.
The tonal variation is controlled by the level of acid exposure over large areas, and thus the
image is shaped by large sections at a time. Another tonal technique, mezzotint, begins with a
plate surface that is evenly indented so that it will carry a fairly dark tone of ink, then smoothing
areas to make them carry less ink and thus print a lighter shade; or, beginning with a smooth
plate, areas are roughened to make them darker; or, these two techniques may be combined.

LITHOGRAPHY

Lithography (from Greek λίθος - lithos, 'stone' + γράφειν - graphein, 'to write') is a method for
printing using a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface.
Invented in 1796 by Bavarian author Alois Senefelder as a low-cost method of publishing
theatrical works,lithography can be used to print text or artwork onto paper or another suitable
material.

CHROMOLITHOGRAPHY

Chromolithography is a method for making multi-color prints. This type of color printing
stemmed from the process of lithography, and it includes all types of lithography that are printed
in color. When chromolithography is used to reproduce photographs, the term photochrom is
frequently used. Lithographers sought to find a way to print on flat surfaces with the use of
chemicals instead of relief or intaglio printing.
Chromolithography became the most successful of several methods of color printing developed
by the 19th century; other methods were developed by printers such as Jacob Christoph Le Blon,
George Baxter and Edmund Evans, and mostly relied on using several woodblocks with the
colors. Hand-coloring also remained important; elements of the official British Ordnance Survey
maps were colored by hand by boys until 1875. The initial technique involved the use of multiple
lithographic stones, one for each color, and was still extremely expensive when done for the best
quality results. Depending on the number of colors present, a chromolithograph could take
months to produce, by very skilled workers. However, much cheaper prints could be produced
by simplifying both the number of colors used, and the refinement of the detail in the image.
Cheaper images, like advertisements, relied heavily on an initial black print (not always a
lithograph), on which colors were then overprinted. To make an expensive reproduction print as
what was once referred to as a “’chromo’”, a lithographer, with a finished painting in front of
him, gradually created and corrected the many stones using proofs to look as much as possible
like the painting in front of him, sometimes using dozens of layers.

ROTATORY PRINTING PRESS

A rotary printing press is a printing press in which the images to be printed are curved around a
cylinder. Printing can be done on large number of substrates, including paper, cardboard, and
plastic. Substrates can be sheet feed or unwound on a continuous roll through the press to be
printed and further modified if required (e.g. die cut, overprint varnished, embossed). Printing
presses that use continuous rolls are sometimes referred to as "web presses". Rotary drum
printing was invented by Richard March Hoe in 1843, perfected in 1846,[1] and patented in
1847. (Note – Some sources describe Parisian 'Hippolyte Auguste Marinoni', (1823, 7 January
1904) as the inventor of the Rotary printing press.

Today, there are three main types of rotary presses; offset commonly known as web offset,
rotogravure, and flexo (short for flexography). While the three types use cylinders to print, they
vary in their method.

SCREEN PRINTING

Screen printing is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil.
The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which
can be pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate. A roller or squeegee is
moved across the screen stencil, forcing or pumping ink past the threads of the woven mesh in
the open areas.

Screen printing is also a stencil method of print making in which a design is imposed on a screen
of silk or other fine mesh, with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance, and ink is
forced through the mesh onto the printing surface. It is also known as silkscreen, seriography,
and serigraph

PRINTING TECHNIQUES

A screen is made of a piece of porous, finely woven fabric called mesh stretched over a frame of
aluminium or wood. Originally human hair then silk was woven to make a screen mesh;
currently most mesh is woven of man-made materials such as steel, nylon, and polyester. Areas
of the screen are blocked off with a non-permeable material to form a stencil, which is a negative
of the image to be printed; that is, the open spaces are where the ink will appear.

The screen is placed atop a substrate such as paper or fabric. Ink is placed on top of the screen,
and a fill bar (also known as a floodbar) is used to fill the mesh openings with ink. The operator
begins with the fill bar at the rear of the screen and behind a reservoir of ink. The operator lifts
the screen to prevent contact with the substrate and then using a slight amount of downward
force pulls the fill bar to the front of the screen. This effectively fills the mesh openings with ink
and moves the ink reservoir to the front of the screen. The operator then uses a squeegee (rubber
blade) to move the mesh down to the substrate and pushes the squeegee to the rear of the screen.
The ink that is in the mesh opening is pumped or squeezed by capillary action to the substrate in
a controlled and prescribed amount, i.e. the wet ink deposit is proportional to the thickness of the
mesh and or stencil. As the squeegee moves toward the rear of the screen the tension of the mesh
pulls the mesh up away from the substrate (called snap-off) leaving the ink upon the substrate
surface.

There are three common types of screenprinting presses. The 'flat-bed', 'cylinder', and the most
widely used type, the 'rotary'.[8]

Textile items printed with multi-colour designs often use a wet on wet technique, or colors dried
while on the press, while graphic items are allowed to dry between colours that are then printed
with another screen and often in a different color after the product is re-aligned on the press.

The screen can be re-used after cleaning. However if the design is no longer needed, then the
screen can be "reclaimed"; that is, cleared of all emulsion and used again. The reclaiming process
involves removing the ink from the screen then spraying on a stencil remover. Stencil removers
come in the form of liquids, gels, or powders. The powdered types have to be mixed with water
before use, and so can be considered to belong to the liquid category. After applying the stencil
remover, the emulsion must be washed out using a pressure washer.

Most screens are ready for recoating at this stage, but sometimes screens will have to undergo a
further step in the reclaiming process called dehazing. This additional step removes haze or
"ghost images" left behind in the screen once the emulsion has been removed. Ghost images tend
to faintly outline the open areas of previous stencils, hence the name. They are the result of ink
residue trapped in the mesh, often in the knuckles of the mesh (the points where threads cross).
[13]

While the public thinks of garments in conjunction with screenprinting, the technique is used on
tens of thousands of items, including decals, clock and watch faces, balloons, and many other
products. The technique has even been adapted for more advanced uses, such as laying down
conductors and resistors in multi-layer circuits using thin ceramic layers as the substrate.

DOT MATRIX PRINTER

A dot matrix printer or impact matrix printer is a type of computer printer with a print head that
runs back and forth, or in an up and down motion, on the page and prints by impact, striking an
ink-soaked cloth ribbon against the paper, much like the print mechanism on a typewriter.
However, unlike a typewriter or daisy wheel printer, letters are drawn out of a dot matrix, and
thus, varied fonts and arbitrary graphics can be produced. Because the printing involves
mechanical pressure, these printers can create carbon copies and carbonless copies.

Each dot is produced by a tiny metal rod, also called a "wire" or "pin", which is driven forward
by the power of a tiny electromagnet or solenoid, either directly or through small levers (pawls).
Facing the ribbon and the paper is a small guide plate (often made of an artificial jewel such as
sapphire or ruby[1]) pierced with holes to serve as guides for the pins. The moving portion of the
printer is called the print head, and when running the printer as a generic text device generally
prints one line of text at a time. Most dot matrix printers have a single vertical line of dot-making
equipment on their print heads; others have a few interleaved rows in order to improve dot
density.

These machines can be highly durable[citation needed]. When they do wear out, it is generally
due to ink invading the guide plate of the print head, causing grit to adhere to it; this grit slowly
causes the channels in the guide plate to wear from circles into ovals or slots, providing less and
less accurate guidance to the printing wires. Eventually, even with tungsten blocks and titanium
pawls, the printing becomes too unclear to read.

LASER PRINTING

A laser printer is a common type of computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and
graphics on plain paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers (MFPs), laser
printers employ a xerographic printing process but differ from analog photocopiers in that the
image is produced by the direct scanning of a laser beam across the printer's photoreceptor.

THERMAL PRINTER

A thermal printer (or direct thermal printer) produces a printed image by selectively heating
coated thermochromic paper, or thermal paper as it is commonly known, when the paper passes
over the thermal print head. The coating turns black in the areas where it is heated, producing an
image. Two-color direct thermal printers can print both black and an additional color (often red)
by applying heat at two different temperatures.

INKJET PRINTING

An inkjet printer is a type of computer printer that creates a digital image by propelling droplets
of ink onto paper. Inkjet printers are the most commonly used type of printer[1] and range from
small inexpensive consumer models to very large professional machines, that can cost up to
thousands of dollars.[2]

The concept of inkjet printing originated in the 19th century, and the technology was first
extensively developed in the early 1950s. Starting in the late 1970s inkjet printers that could
reproduce digital images generated by computers were developed, mainly by Epson, Hewlett-
Packard (HP), and Canon. In the worldwide consumer market, four manufacturers account for
the majority of inkjet printer sales: Canon, HP, Epson, and Lexmark, a 1991 spin-off from IBM.
[citation needed]

The emerging ink jet material deposition market also uses inkjet technologies, typically
printheads using piezoelectric crystals, to deposit materials directly on substrates.

DIGITAL PRINTING

Digital printing refers to methods of printing from a digital based image directly to a variety of
media.[1] It usually refers to professional printing where small run jobs from desktop publishing
and other digital sources are printed using large format and/or high volume laser or inkjet
printers. Digital printing has a higher cost per page than more traditional offset printing methods
but this price is usually offset by the cost saving in avoiding all the technical steps in between
needed to make printing plates. It also allows for on demand printing, short turn around, and
even a modification of the image (variable data) with each impression.[2] The savings in labor
and ever increasing capability of digital presses means digital printing is reaching a point where
it will match or supersede offset printing technologies ability to produce larger print runs at a low
price.[3]

TECHNIQUE
The main difference between digital printing and traditional methods such as lithography,
flexography, gravure, or letterpress is that no printing plates are used, resulting in a quicker and
less expensive turn around time. The most popular methods include inkjet or laser printers that
deposit pigment or toner onto a wide variety of substrates including paper, photo paper, canvas,
glass, metal, marble and others.

Consumer and professional printers such as inkjet or laser printers use the most common
examples of digital printing.

In many of the processes the ink or toner does not permeate the substrate, as does conventional
ink, but forms a thin layer on the surface and may in some systems be additionally adhered to the
substrate by using a fuser fluid with heat process (toner) or UV curing process (ink).