There have been many people will ask: what’s the main difference between screen printing and offset printing? Which one is better? What's their technical difference?
Firstly, let's make clear the two basic concepts of screen printing and offset printing:
What is screen printing ?
Screen printing belongs to the porous printing, it is known as the four printing methods together with lithography, gravure printing, gravure printing. Porous printing includes stencil, spray printing and screen printing .The principle of porous printing is: printing plate (paper film plate or other plate on the plate base can be made through the ink hole) in printing, through a certain pressure to make the ink through the hole of the plate transfer to the substrate (paper, ceramic, etc.), forming an image or text.
What’s offset printing ?
Offset printing is a kind of planographic printing, it is simple to say offset printing is a printing method by means of rubber plate to print the picture and text to the substrate on. Rubber blanket plays an irreplaceable role in printing, such as: it can make up for the surface of the substrate is not smooth, so that the ink is fully transferred, it can reduce the water on the plate (the role of water in printing after) to the substrate on the transfer. We now usually say offset printing may be more narrow scope, that is, there are three rollers (plate, blanket, embossing) lithography printing method.
How to distinguish screen printing and offset printing ?
The biggest difference is :
1.Screen printing without dot, offset printing with dot, oblique to the light you can see.
2.Screen printing generally look carefully there will be some not smooth edge, offset printing more normal, horizontal vertical.
3.All images (such as colorful pictures) can only offset printing, not screen printing.
4.Common monochrome simple graphics, text, can be silk-screen. Some small print screen printing will have some rough edges if you carefully look.
As for screen printing and offset printing which one is better ? There is no specific saying. Seaory believes that the choice of screen printing and offset printing should be decided according to customer’s industry and products demands to decide. Different industries, different product’s printing method are different.
