Types of post press operations in printing industry

Commercial printing is classified into three major phases – pre press, press and post press. After the printing of texts and images is over (after pre press and press) the process of post press starts. This is the end of the entire printing process that gives finishing touch to the end product. Post press is subject to several sub processes that are implemented as per the type of the project and the job being handled. Here are the few basic types of post press operations in printing industry which are not always but are often used:

Cutting: This is one of the most common operations of post press which are used in almost all project. For this purpose typical machines are used called guillotine cutter or "paper cutter". These are special machines that are used for cutting large substrates of web-type into different sheets or pages. These machines vary in sizes, features, abilities, capacities and configurations; because they are build for individual purposes.

Folding: This is another activity performed most commonly in printing workshops for pamphlets, magazines and product boxes. There are three basic types of folders used in print shops – bone folder, knife folder and buckle folder. Bone folder is the oldest one among its peers that are made either of bone or plastic. Today they are used occasionally only for high quality jobs. Knife folders on the other hand use knife to force the paper getting into the roller for folding. Buckle folder turn a sheet into buckle so as to pass it between the two rotating rollers.

Assembling: In assembly, there are three steps to be followed - gathering, collating and inserting. Gathering involves placing bunch of sheets (signatures) one after another. This is done for assembling books having page thicknesses ranging between 3 to 8 inches. Collating is another process to gather individual sheets of paper instead of bunch of papers. The last step, inserting involves the process of combining signatures or bunch of papers by “inserting” one into another. Inserting is done for the papers having signature pieces having final thickness less than one-half inches.

Biding: In this category the printed material or pages are adhered together. Three most common binding techniques are used - adhesive binding, side binding and saddle binding. For accomplishing binding process, three individual types of covers are used. They are - self-covers, soft-covers and case-bound covers. Each of them is used as per the type of printing job.

These are just few basic post press operations performed in printing industry. However, these are not the essential operations that are performed for every project. There are many additional post press related activities which are executed as per the requirement.