1 spot colour with tint onto a white
base
2 spot colours onto a white
base
CMYK onto a white base 
CMYK business CD onto a white base |
This is the industry standard for printing
CDs. If you buy an audio CD from HMV or software CD from
PC World it will
have been screen printed. We use a 5 colour Hanky screen
printing machine which has a capacity of 4,000 discs an hour
and can print onto 12cm CDRs/DVDRs, 8cm mini CDRs/DVDRs,
and CD business cards. Our standard turnaround is 3 working
days though we also have a 24 hour express service.
When screen printing, artwork
will fall into one of two categories: spot colour or CMYK.
If
the artwork consists of just a few colours then screen
printing using spot colours
is the route to
take. The colour range that can be printed corresponds
to the Pantone Solid Coated range which provides hundreds
of colours including special metallic and fluorescent colours.
There are three good reasons for using spot colours:
- Allows you to specifically match Pantone colours which
is important for company branding - in fact screen printing
is the only print method which allows this!
- Excellent for large solid area coverage
.
- For lower volume runs (upto 1,000) using just a few
spot colours will keep the costs down.
One technique that is often used
to create the illusion of more colours in a design
is by using
shades
of your spot colours:
these are also known as tints. (This
has been used in the 1 spot colour sample. Please note
that a tint is not a solid colour.)
We can print up to 5 spot colours
If
the artwork design is full colour then screen printing
using CMYK is used. To print this the artwork is split
into the component colours Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and
Black. (CMYK is also known as 4 colour process) If required
it is possible to print CMYK and 1 spot colour.
Before proceeding we run a technical
check against your artwork. These include checks for
trapping, black overprinting, tint percentage level,
and font sizes.
Finally a 'low res' pdf proof is produced and emailed
to the client to be 'signed
off.'
To create the screens used to print
the design a film for each of the spot colours or
each of the Cyan, Magenta,
Yellow & Black must first be generated. This is
done using an imagesetter (essentially a very high
resolution
printer). Creating the film is an important process
in determining the final quality of the printed disc.
There
are key settings such as dot shape, line ruling and
line angle which must be controlled. We use our own
drum
imagesetter and Level 3 RIP which gives us complete
control over the film quality as well
as allowing us to get the job started quicker!
We use Grade 'A' ProSource 52x,
700MB, 80min CDR media. These dont have a groove on
the printing surface (stacking ring) which
allows us to print the artwork uninterrupted from
118mm to
18mm.
The ProSource CDR media have a silver recordable surface
(often called Silver/Silver or Silver/Diamond), which
makes them look almost identical to replicated discs.
We use Grade 'A' ProSource 8x, 4.7GB
DVD-R media. Again these dont have a stacking ring
on the printing surface
so allowing us to print from 118mm to 18mm. The recordable
surface is the standard DVD-R purple.
We can also screen print onto 8cm
mini CDRs/DVDRs and CD Business Cards.
If requested we can also print onto Taiyo Yuden media
please call for details.
We do not charge for the white base.
You decide if you want your design printed onto either
the reflective
silver surface or onto a white base. |
