Research visit: Duffield printers

Today I visited Duffield, a digital and litho printing company based in Kirkstall, the motive for the visit was to find out what is required of us designers and illustrators when it comes to sending work off to a printers. The main Thing I took away from this is that a printer provides the whole package, from printing to finishing the work. So all I really need to do when sending work to a printers is provide things like a bleed on the document and make sure all the assets are there, such as typefaces etc. Duffield recommended sending Hi Res PDF files through to them, with the possibility of sending directly editable files (such as Indesign files) to them if necessary, providing they are packaged files. When considering a process like UV glossing for example, all we would have to do in the document is place over it a spot colour of the shape we want glossing, and specify that this is a gloss part. The specialist processes happen secondary to the print and the price is added to according to what process you choose, and how much of it is needed. For example, I got a quote on 250 business cards, this would cost £30, but with processes on top this would cost more. This to me seems like a manageable price, its definitely worth checking some more places out in the future, theres talk of visiting team impression in leeds at some point in the next few weeks.

I am considering getting a quote for the printing and finishing of the next brief I do depending on what it is. This seems to be a perfect opportunity to produce a run of work to sell at the book fair, which is coming up in march.

After a nice chat with the business manager and one of the member of staff from the studio, we got a guided tour of the "shop floor" where all the printing kit is found! i was a little bit excited and snap happy, luckily the guys there didn't mind as long as i didn't photograph any of the jobs they were doing. Fine by me, i was only there for the printers anyway!

So, for litho printing (which was the first process we were shown) Duffield use thin metal plates which can curve round the barrels inside the printer coated with a light sensitive blue film. The image for print gets burned onto the plate, and the blue only remains where the image will print. Above is the machine that the plate goes through to take this transformation. (the plates are split up into C,M,Y and K)

Above is a plate after this process has happened.

The plate then goes to here, the litho printer, has a separate section for each colour separation and one for a gloss protective coating. A huge amount of paper is stacked at the front of the printer:

The front of the printer has these little air suckers at the front along with a laser tracker which ensures that the printer only picks up one piece of paper at a time. If it picks up two, the laser shuts that bad boy down before it gets anywhere near the press.

 the ink is then rolled onto the plate and is printed in the order K, C, M, Y - the bottom image shows the plate being taken into the bottom of the K printer. This Litho printer is a hiedelberg, which is a german make, Phil who gave us the tour compared it to a german car, known for effeciecny. coooolll.

The print then comes to proofing after this process, in which the proofer can specify via a computer hoked upto the printer what colours need to be more concentrated based on the quality of the first print that comes out of the printer. I found out that Litho is great for huge jobs which are needed at speed. (this litho printer is capable of 20,000 prints an hour) For smaller jobs and proofs, Duffield use a digital printer which is actually in the studio. Its unlike anything we have at college.

They basically said to us at Duffield that they would print small runs on the digital printer, the standard of the print quality is really high and the rate at which this printer churns it out is also impressive (12000 an hour) they said they use this printer in the morning dominantly and get any small jobs out of the way first, they also offer a next day finished print service which is great. I think i'm guna use these guys during my FMP as a pilot for future print runs, as im going to be based in leeds.