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Traditionally, label
and sticker printing has been done on big, mechanical flexographic
printing presses. This has
always been a complex and expensive process, involving outputting your artwork to film in order to create flexographic
printing plates -
which are then loaded on to the printing press, the inks are mixed and the machine is calibrated. All this must take place before you can print a
single label or sticker. Digital printing changes all
this - it brings custom label and sticker printing into the 21st century.
There are four main advantages that digital
label printing has over traditional flexographic
label printing:
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Speed – with no plates to create,
and very little setup of the machine, a custom label job printed on a digital
printing press
can be printed in minutes - not hours. Many flexographic printing presses can take
several hours to set up for a four color process job, whereas our digital
printing press is ready to go
almost immediately. Using our digital printing process, we can have 4 or 5
custom label jobs out the door while the old style
printing press is still being set up!
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Quality – if you want high
resolution and vibrant colors then you need digital printing. Our
HP-Indigo WS4500 printing presses can print at 230 line screen, whereas most flexographic presses print at 133 or 150 line screen. You can really see
the difference in the custom label's detail and color. If you are selling your products at the retail level, you really should consider digital label printing just for the quality
of the label it produces.
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Cost – because there are no plates
to create, no film to output and minimal machine setup, fixed costs for
the digital printer are very low in comparison with flexographic shops. So if you want to print a
relatively small number of custom labels (say less than 25,000), you will always get a better price with digital printing. This way you can order
only the products you need, rather than a huge number of custom labels
just to get the best unit price - which obviously affects your
cash flow in a positive way.
Additionally, custom label designs and content can change frequently.
With
digital printing you simply submit new artwork and we can start printing
your new custom labels, whereas in flexographic printing you would need to have new plates
made every time you make a change to your label or sticker (typical plate charges are around $120 per set for a single design) - so if you have multiple
label or sticker designs the plate
charges can add up very quickly.
"Gang running" - this is a term that refers to the ability to combine
several different designs into a single printing press job. In flexographic printing, this is impossible - as each
custom label design requires separate plates
and setup and therefore each product carries substantial cost overheads. In digital printing, you can "gang" together multiple
labels and designs (so long
as they're the same size) into a single job. For example, if you have 10 designs of a 3" x 4"
custom label and want 250 stickers of each design, we treat
that as a single 2500-label job and price it accordingly.
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Flexibility – perhaps digital printing’s
greatest power is its flexibility. With digital printing you can print 1,000
custom labels and every label can contain different data. That’s right - completely variable data printing.
Whether you want to include names from a database, consecutive numbers, multiple barcodes, or just several versions of the same label, digital
printing can handle it with ease.
Don't take our word for it, though! You can see what digital
printing can do for you by requesting
some custom label samples.
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One of our two state-of-the-art HP-Indigo WS4500 digital label printing presses.
Lightning Labels is
the first label printer in North America with two HP-Indigo
WS4500 state-of-the-art digital label printing presses. These
high-tech beasts
are capable of printing labels up to 11” x 17.5”.
With resolution capabilities of up to 230 line screen or 850 DPI in 4-color process mode,
this means you can have as many
color variations as you like for the same price AND there are no plate charges!
HP’s patented ElectroInk technology uses liquid inks (not toner) so you get perfect offset quality every time. Click
here for a PDF file which explains in detail the properties and attributes of the inks we use.
We stock a variety of substrates
(materials) to print your labels on; By far our most commonly used
substrate is known as BOPP (which is a fancy industry term for
polypropylene) - it comes in White, Clear and Chrome finishes, is
very strong, impervious to water and oils, and is perfect for almost
any indoor application. We also carry a White Vinyl material for
outdoor uses -
it is thicker, more fade-resistant and suitable for such things as
bumper stickers or equipment labels.
In addition, we have access to a
variety of "specialty" stocks - one example is a cream-colored
textured paper stock known as Estate No. 9 -
perfect for the wine industry or where a more "antique" appearance
is required.
For the "finishing" phase of the
label production process, we have two Rotoflex Rotary die cutters.
These
machines can laminate, under score, die-cut, strip, slit and roll
your labels in a single pass with top speeds of 300 feet per minute.
We buy only the highest quality dies from the leading die
manufacturer.
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