Printing involves devices designed to ensure a print job is placed appropriately on a printing press, known as side guides. A typical side guide in printing consists of either metal or plastic bars mounted along one of its edges that cover all widths of bed space. They should then be adjusted to parallel the paper edge while maintaining the correct placement for the printing plate. The print job is aligned correctly on the press while its printing plate remains appropriately positioned.
A side guide is an integral component of printing that plays an essential part in positioning print jobs correctly on press. When incorrectly set, print jobs could misalign improperly on the press, resulting in reduced quality output from that job.
Side guides are essential when printing on both sides of a paper. Without properly aligning it, printing may bleed onto either side, creating unintentional inaccuracies that compromise print jobs. If not used, prints could smudge or blur when the second side is printed, resulting in less-than-stellar results.
Side guides can also assist with keeping different colors of ink in registration or alignment with one another when printing multicolored designs or images, which is crucial when trying to achieve crisp images with lots of different hues. Otherwise, your designs might come out blurry or mismatched altogether.
Though side guides are most frequently employed for offset printing, they can also be utilized in screen and digital print processes.
A side guide is an invaluable asset when it comes to printing. This tool helps the user position the print head across a page for consistent results, and producing top-quality prints would only be more challenging with such assistance.