Plastic Card Printing Service

Highest Quality Cards at Affordable Prices

Plastic Card Printing Service from Dashford

Photo ID Cards - Loyalty Cards
Membership Cards - Discount Cards
Staff ID Badges - Plastic Business Cards
Gift Cards - Ultra Violet Security Cards
Access Control Cards - Novellty Cards
Metallic Cards - Proximity Cards

UK Leading Service

Dashford provide you with access to the UK's leading plastic card printing services, with the capability of fulfilling all your plastic card printing requirements. From short run basic card printing through to large run security encoded cards, Dashford has an ideal solution for you.

Digital Printing

Digital printing is not only cost effective for short runs but great for short turnaround times. Digital printing is produced by four colour process, there are no plate charges as the designs are printed straight from electronic artwork. This enables you to acquire actual proofs of your artwork with very little cost, in very little time.

The four ink colours used are Cyan (Blue), Magenta (Red), Yellow and Black - often referred to as CMYK. The inks used are translucent and can be overprinted as well as being combined in a variety of different proportions, which provides the flexibility to produce a wide range of colours.

Dashford cards are printed on one of two 6 Colour HP indigo Presses, each have the facility to personalise "On-Press", which makes them ideal for Variable data jobs whether that is text, numbers or graphics. This enables us to provide you with high quality identity cards, as all of the personalised details (including photograph) that are printed on the core of the card, which enhances their life span.

Lithographic Printing

Lithographic printing is the most common form of commercial printing, it is perfect for large volume work or when matching specific colours or tints. The basic principle of litho printing is that oil and water do not mix! A series of plates are used which are attached to cylinders on the press. During the print process the plate is kept wet so that the ink, which is greasy, is rejected by the wet areas and adheres to the image areas.

Here are the basic stages of litho printing:

Artwork - photographs, illustrations and text are scanned and entered into a PC or Mac.
These elements are combined into a document using page makeup software.
Full size films are output using a high-resolution image setter. These could be either positives or negatives.
Printing plates are made from the films using a photochemical process. The plates are exposed to high-intensity light through the films and then chemically treated so that non-image areas are water absorbent.
The flexible plates are attached to the plate cylinders of a litho press and the job is printed.

» Card Printing » Card Personalisation » Design Service » Card Fulfilment