Understanding The Process Of Sheet Fed Printing

By Author: Brent Durell
Total Articles: 172
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Sheet fed printers are those kinds where the paper is loaded as sheets onto the paper tray of the printer, as opposed to those fed by the rolls. Yes, your inkjet printer or laser printer may be classified as such. But there are many more kinds of them. And there are also sheet fed printing companies that only use these kinds of printers.

Big printing presses use the offset machine. The offset is a roll-fed machine, meaning that paper is loaded into it in rolls. On the other hand, the sheet fed printers use only cut-sized paper. That is the only thing that could fit it is paper tray and its orientation is to pick up paper one sheet at a time so that it can print the image on it.

Sheet-fed printers come in different sizes and speeds. While they can only contain sheets, these cut-sized papers are also taken from the big, continuous roll. While the big offset machines that produce newspapers are called roll-fed printers, older fax machine models may also be considered as such. Older desktop printers are also roll-fed. In both cases, the printers ...
... do not produce good quality prints.

Nowadays, desktop computer printers come in different sizes and features. And now, they can already print on plain sheet paper. They have better printing quality and use high quality but low priced inks.

Photocopiers may also be classified as sheet-fed printers and they are actually very common all over the world. The first photocopier made by Xerox in 1959 has been in this format already. Most copiers only accept the standard letter size and A4 size of paper. There are also larger units that can print onto 11” x 17” or 12” x 18” of paper size but these units can be really expensive because all their parts are also larger.

When it comes to printing presses, these are available as either sheet-fed or roll-fed. Much like the desktop printers and copiers, the sheet-fed presses can only print on cut sheets of paper one at a time. But unlike desktop printers, they can run at much higher speeds, like producing thousands of prints per hour. Commercial printers prefer the sheet-fed presses because of their higher-quality output. A sheet-fed press comes in many sizes. They can print on as small as 4 inch-wide papers to as big as 40-inch-wide papers. But these machines are not needed in newspapers and tabloids where web presses are preferred because of their efficiency in speed and costs.

Sheet-fed printers can run on different kinds of paper stock. But the most common cut-size papers are the #20 bond paper. They can also print on boards or stock cards that are usually used in boxes and packaging. The papers can come in a variety of colors and materials, like pulp and cotton, and in different finishes, like matte or glossy surfaces. That is why this kind of printer is great for short-run projects like stationeries, memo pads, and calling cards because you can use a wide variety of paper stock. These are just perfect for a desktop publishing business.

While the usual sheetfed printers can only take on the short or long-sized bond paper size, the bigger units used in sheet fed printing companies can print on larger sheets. The bigger sizes can take on paper sizes like 17” x 22”, 23” x 35”, and 25” x 38”. The biggest machine could print onto a sheet that is the size of 49” x 74”. When the paper is big, the smaller images just fill the entire sheet and then are cut to the size required.