Sheetfed & Web Offset Printing
Pre-Press
In our ever rapidly evolving world, the role of Pre-Press has also changed with the increasing demands put upon it. It mainly centres on the areas post proofing, but including imposition and plate production, the biggest change in the last 10 years has been the move from film to direct imaging of the printing plate.
Digital imposition is now the standard and, combined with computer-to-plate, these technologies have been directly responsible for much of the improvements in print quality over the last decade.
New technology is still making an impact in image quality too - the latest plate setters will allow printed images of much greater detail, sharper print quality and more control over variables such as dot gain and therefore colour.
Perfecting Presses
We have four long perfecting presses that sit between the sheet-fed and web offset machines. Both can take sheets up to B1 as well as reels of paper from 60gsm up to 190gsm. By using the perfecting units on the press we can print either 5 or 6 colours in one pass on both sides of the sheet. This means they are very competitive on longer runs, say from 100,000 up to 1.5 million.
Web Offset Printing
From reels of paper, up to five colours can be printed on both sides of the paper simultaneously. Ideal for large volumes and folded sections up to 16 printed pages at a time. With a sheeting speed of 50,000 cut offs per hour, and an in-line speed of up to 36,000 cut offs per hour our presses run at optimum speed and management.
Along with its built-in colour control system, which gives us the ability to evaluate colours in much the same way as our sheetfed presses, we have one of the most state-of-the-art web offset presses in the market place.
In-line Finishing
Our WPM in-line finishing system allows us to take a reel of paper and create a spine-glued booklet with re-moist and perforating or a die-cut aperture. We have a basic format book that helps our clients understand some of the formats we can produce inline.
Finishing
As with all our processes McCorquodale are very proud of the finishing areas. These include folding, guillotining, saddle stitching, perfect binding & hand finishing. The finishing area takes the flat printed sheets from the presses and transforms them into the finished product. All these processes depend on skilled, knowledgeable and dedicated people who take care and pride in producing the finished article.
We are always actively looking at equipment developments so that we are ready to meet the demands of the future as well as the present. This ensures that the quality and output of our finishing operations is always improving and with our operators' involvement we are always looking for quicker and more efficient ways of working.