This printing method applies ink to the front and back of a substrate without requiring the operator to manually flip the stack and run it through again. Presses equipped for this feature use a specialized cylinder mechanism to tumble the sheet between printing units. It drastically cuts production time for books, magazines, and two-sided commercial work.
Make sure the perfecting cylinder is engaged before you start the run for those two-sided flyers.
In commercial offset printing, running a job in perfecting mode often requires a wider gripper margin because the press has to grab the tail edge of the sheet to flip it.
Also heard as
- duplexing
Related terms
Perfecting press
A printing machine that prints on both sides of a continuous sheet or web of paper in a single pass.
Sheetfed
Describes a printing press that takes individual, pre-cut sheets of paper.
Web
A continuous roll of paper fed through a high-speed printing press.
Reiteration
The printing of the second side of a sheet that has already been printed on one side.