d1

D1 on-going developments in printing and output techniques

Vinyl and laser cutters, these are relatively new. Vinyl cutters are when an image can be cut out of vinyl for use for advertising mostly used to put on the side of a van. Laser cutters are most commonly used in schools and small businesses and often by people that have a hobby to youse them. They aren’t as costly and professional as the vinyl cutters. When the technology improves then we will be able to create larger and clearer and more soother graphics this has the effected the industry as a whole as now they can create larger and better advertisements. An example of a really good vinyl cutter would be the Creation P-Cut CTO1200 48" Vinyl Cutter which is used in the industry for commercial.

Inkjet and wide formatting, this works by placing ink onto a piece of paper or any other sort of print materials. This is a fairly cheap method of making graphics. Wide format printing is any printer with a print width between 17’’ and 100’’. This will be used to make large banners and large posters.  They will tend to youse a roll of print instead of individual sheets and may incorporate hot-air dryers to prevent prints from sticking to themselves as they are produced. This is mainly down to the size you are printing. The technology is developing more towards the ink technologies, with solvent, eco solvent and UV- curing as opposed to water based ink sets. Their main uses for outdoor graphics are billboards, truck sides and truck curtains, building graphics and banners. Whereas indoor displays include point-of-sales displays, exhibition graphics, museum graphics and backlit displays. Inkjet will now allow us to produce larger pieces of print.

Laser printing

Laser printing allows high quality text and graphic to be printed on paper. This allows production of high quality vector images onto advertisements such as leaflets and flyers however there are drawbacks, the equipment is expensive and can be potentially dangerous, this is because of shock hazards and the toner particles as a fire hazard and could cause damage to the respiratory system. As I said it has affected the graphics industry as they can now produce high quality leaflets and flyers. An example of a good laser printer is the HP LaserJet Pro 400 colour M451nw Colour Laser printer.