Our collective printing process explained

At PrintTogether it's not only our environmentally friendly printing process that makes us unique, the way in which we process our print runs is different too. We operate on a system of collective green printing, which makes the whole process cheaper for our customers. If you haven't ordered with us before you might be wondering how it works. Well wonder no more, let us explain how it works.

What?

Basically, collective printing involves identifying customers with similar print requirements and printing their items together. Think of it like car pooling; if several people can travel together they all save money. In our case printing together saves time too.

How?

First you need to understand a little about how a printing press works. To set up or 'make ready' the press the images are transferred to metal plates and the ink applied to these plates. They are then used to transfer the ink to rubber sheets and it's these sheets that are used to transfer the image to the paper or card. It sounds complicated, and it is to a certain extent, but the important thing to know is that this is the time consuming part of printing and it needs to be done for each and every different print job. It's slow work, but someone's got to do it!

Still with us? great!

So, if we can put several jobs together on the one press, like various business cards for example in the illustration above, we only need to do this 'make ready' once, but we get several completed print runs out of it. This saves us time and the customer money, so everyone's a winner.

Why?

Not only does this method help our customers to save money, it's better for the environment too. By printing several jobs on one set up we reduce the amount of plates, paper, ink, energy and water we use and the amount of waste we produce. Good news all round.

So there you have it - an environmentally and pocket friendly printing process!

To view our online printing service visit: www.printtogether.com.au/prices