|
"We Recommend the Butterfly Mark Certification from the Waterless Printing Association (WPA)."
Waterless Printing Keeps Use of Toxic Chemicals to a Minimum and Generates No Waste Solutions
We at EINS Corporation offer waterless printing, a water development system that considerably limits the use of chemical solutions. What's more, this system generates no waste solutions since it uses no fountain solution containing organic solvents or toxic chemical substances. The secret of this system lies in the structure of the printing plate itself which is coated with silicone rubber. This system dramatically reduces the amount of toxic chemical substances used in the developing and printing processes, and generates no waste solutions. We advocate environmentally friendly printing, and urge the use of waterless printing to customers who place orders with us for catalogs, flyers, publications, and public relations magazines, for example, as part of our efforts to preserve the global environment.
■Environmentally Friendly Waterless Printing
| ※1 | BOD…This stands for biochemical oxygen demand, the chemical procedure for determining the uptake rate of oxygen dissolved in a fixed amount of time by biological organisms in a body of water. BOD is used as an index for indicating the degree of contamination in water by organic substances. |
| ※2 | COD…This stands for chemical oxygen demand, the chemical procedure for measuring the amount of organic compounds in water. COD is used as an index for indicating the degree of contamination in water by organic substances. |
| ※3 | Fountain solution…This is the water solution used for damping the surface of the plate in sheet-fed offset printing to prevent printing ink from sticking to non-image areas of the plate. |
■No Waste Solutions Generated During Printing
As its name implies, general "offset printing with water" uses water (generally referred to as "fountain solution" which contains organic substances such as H solution*, IPA, etc.) in the printing process. This printing method makes use of the characteristic of water to repel oil to create areas on the plate that ink does not stick to.
"Waterless printing" however, uses the characteristic of the plate's silicone rubber to repel water to create these areas. This way, printing can be performed without using absolutely any water at all.
The amount of developer used and amount of waste solutions can also be drastically reduced since the silicone coat developing process adopts a system of water development that generates no collected waste solutions.
| ※ | H solution:Chemical added to fountain solution to greatly enhance printing performance. This chemical contains large amounts of organic substances that attract bacteria. |
■Higher-definition, Better-looking Prints
Waterless printing differs from printing with water in that ink never bleeds due to the action of water. For this reason, the problem of changes in tone caused by dot gain, that just could not be avoided with printing with water, is now solved by waterless printing. Each dot is sharply reproduced to ensure beautifully finished and high-resolution printed matter. What's more, even when using very uneven printing stock such as wood free paper, mat paper or Japanese paper, round halftone does are faithfully reproduced on the printing stock as expected. If you want more beautiful and more accurate printing matter, the answer will always be waterless printing.
|
