Printing Technology

Initially, the printing process was very tedious and time-consuming. The first recorded production of printed labels was developed using pressure and images cut into wood or metal, labels were applied to hand-made paper on a wooden hand press.  Due to the industrial revolution in the 19th century, the printing industry expanded its technology; from the first steam-powered cylinder printing press to continuous papermaking machines. The technological advances from the printing industry of the 1800s lead to the modern label industry and technologies like Color printing, the halftone process, the offset printing process, and coated paper.

         In the 19th century, labeling became a commodity that produces applications such as automatic volume production, bottle filling lines, the growth in pharmacy products, canning factories, box labels, luggage labels, and matchbox and cigar box/band labels. In the 1970s with the innovations of narrow web screen, hot-foil and combination process presses, UV-curing ink, and the advancement of plate-making technology. In the 1980s began, printing technology produces barcodes transformed with the introduction of heat-sensitive label stocks. The UV flexo processes dominated the beginning of the 2000s. Digital printing evolves around the mid-2000s with electro photographic liquid, dry toner technologies, and the recent UV and water-based inkjets.

        With the variety of today’s technology, the digital world creates new ways of working, color management enhancement, the requirement of a more sophisticated management information system, extended color gamut, variations in press speed, the benefits and detriments of inline or offline finishing, and the use of laser die-cutting. Printing Technology has had an incredible economic and technological expansion continues to evolve and change to meet new demands, bringing more variables and even more label printing options, technology, and advancements.