Printing systems: manual to Rip Caldera

Have you ever wondered how we got from the old SERIGRAFIA printing system to process images with a RIP like EL CALDERA with hundreds of functions for the DIGITAL PRINTING system?

From the beginning of writing it was necessary to make copies only that at that time there were copyists who dedicated their lives to reproducing texts by hand. In the fifth century, the first printing system appeared: serigraphy. This was a completely handmade method that consisted in the carving of wooden molds. This process was the attraction of the moment but with time the need arose to accelerate the production and avoid the erosion of the molds. This is how Gutemberg arrived in the middle of the 6th century to revolutionize the way of conceiving printing. His idea was to create mobile types, that is, have the entire alphabet and that each letter is a different item in this way you could compose any text, you just had to place each letter in its place to form words and phrases. This type of printing was called typography and it was only the beginning.

With the passage of time, the printing systems were adapted to new technologies. Linotype, continuous rotary printing, gravure and lithography are some of the methods that are part of the story. Nowadays, the most used types of printing are others, such as, for example, silk-screen printing, which is a technique that consists in recording images by means of a silk screen or very fine wire mesh, flexography, a printing method mostly used for packaging that works with rotary and uses rubber plates and water-based inks that dry faster or Offset Printing, a system that works with a four-channel color mode known as CMYK and uses aluminum plates that transfer an image on a rubber "blanket", and then roll that image on the printing surface.

DIGITAL PRINTING

Another printing system that we have not mentioned yet and today is the most usual is digital. This method reproduces high definition digital images on surfaces such as photographic paper, vinyls, fabrics, plastics, wood, corrugated plastic etc.

In Base3, in addition to having these modern printing methods we have incorporated a software called Rip Caldera that manages to unify the printing systems achieving an optimization in the consumption of inks. This allows a high quality printing that maintains the visual precision of the original colors and also helps the same work to remain the same even if it is printed in different periods of time. In addition, this software can print and RIP while preparing the design, nesting, cutting and color matching of other jobs that are sent to print. The Caldera RIP interface has been carefully designed to provide optimal ergonomics.