Gang Run Printing
Gang-run printing describes a printing method in which multiple printing projects are placed on a common paper sheet in an effort to reduce printing costs and paper waste. Gang runs are generally used with sheet-fed printing presses and CMYK process color jobs, which require four separate plates that are loaded into the press. It takes up to 250 sheets for a "make ready," which is the process of getting the plates inked up and the ink levels set correctly.
Printers use the term "gang run" or "gang" to describe the practice of placing many print projects on the same sheet or piggybacking a project on a vacant, unused portion of a print sheet. Sheet-fed presses are generally "full sheet" (28" x 40"), "half sheet" (28" x 19"), or "quarter sheet" (13" x 19"). In offset printing, the first sheet costs more than the next 1,000. Gang-run printing allows multiple jobs to share the setup cost. For example, a 28" x 40" sheet can hold 9 4" x 6" at 5,000 or 18 2,500 postcards (each card takes 4.25" x 6.25" on the sheet to accommodate full bleed. Gang-run printing has been one of the driving forces in the large drop in the price for full-color printing.
Read more about Gang Run Printing: Advantages, Disadvantages, Restrictions
Famous quotes containing the words gang, run and/or printing:
“We owe to genius always the same debt, of lifting the curtain from the common, and showing us that divinities are sitting disguised in the seeming gang of gypsies and peddlars.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is said that some Western steamers can run on a heavy dew, whence we can imagine what a canoe may do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The printing press was at first mistaken for an engine of immortality by everybody except Shakespeare.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)