Printing Machinery and Equipment Key Terms

Understand various types of printing equipment

By Kristina Seleshanko

People have written volumes of books about the intricacies of printing, but never before has the world seen so many printing options. They range from the simple to the highly complex. A small business might choose to desktop publish small booklets, while a corporation might select offset printing for its catalogs. An artisan might choose to hire an old-fashioned letterpress expert.

With all these options comes a variety of lingo the average business person may not understand. Yet in order to get the quality and type of printing your business requires, you'll need to grasp many of these terms. With this in mind, here are some common terms you are likely to run across in the industry.

Prepress equipment

Prepress equipment is any piece of equipment used to create a book, magazine or other document before it goes to print. This includes equipment such as cameras, image setters and processors.
Try: WiseGEEK explains in detail what prepress is, including the process documents usually take prior to printing.

Sheet fed offset press

In order to work, someone or something needs to feed a sheet fed offset press single sheets of paper. The machine then individually prints every sheet, which can produce a finer quality printing than other types of presses.
Try: Suba Solutions describes and pictures its sheet fed offset printers.

Web fed offset press

A web fed offset press allows an entire roll of paper to feed through it. Once printed, workers need to cut the paper into sheets. Web fed offset presses are much faster than sheet fed offset presses and are generally more economical.
Try: TechTarget describes web fed offset presses in more detail.

Padding machines

Padding machines bind together stacks of paper in such a way that someone can easily tear off each page. An example of a product made with a padding machine is a writing pad.
Try: Heavenly Office describes and pictures several padding machines.

RIP

RIP, or RIPs, stands for "Raster Image Processing" software. It is software that's purchased separately from a press and made by a manufacturer other than the printer's manufacturer.
Try: Thomas Zuber explains what RIPs are and offers general how-to guidelines.

Imagesetter

Imagesetters are high resolution devices that expose sheets or rolls of film or paper with a laser. Imagesetters create high-quality black and white images or text, and the machine burns the data onto a plate for a printing press.
Try: ZDNet explains imagesetters in further detail and provides pictures.