What are the limitations of traditional printing technology?

Traditional printing technology has the following core limitations, which are increasingly prominent in today's high-precision, flexible production landscape:

• Long platemaking cycle: Requiring design, platemaking, and proofreading, the production cycle is 3-5 times longer than digital printing, making it difficult to quickly respond to urgent orders.
• High print run threshold: Economic batch sizes require at least 300 copies, and the cost per sheet for small orders is 2-3 times that of digital printing.

• Color reproduction defects: Affected by water and glue, color vividness is 15%-20% lower than digital printing, and gradient transitions are prone to discontinuity.
• Lack of overprint accuracy: Traditional offset printing can have overprint errors of 0.1-0.3mm, making it difficult to meet the demands of high-end printing. Packaging accuracy requirement of ≤0.02mm

• Content immutability: Variable data printing cannot be achieved on the same printing plate; personalized customization requires re-printing.
• Material adaptability: Printing on special substrates such as metal and curved surfaces is limited, requiring secondary processing such as screen printing.

• Pollution Issues: The platemaking process generates waste liquid, resulting in carbon emissions per ton higher than digital printing by 1.5 tons.
• Inventory Pressure: Minimum order quantities lead to overproduction, resulting in inventory loss rates of up to 15%.

These limitations have led to the gradual replacement of traditional printing in areas such as short-run printing and personalized customization by digital printing, but digital printing still maintains a cost advantage in large-scale standardized production.