Platen Presses

Presses that use a ‘clam shell’ approach

Platen presses here include presses powered by foot, steam or elec­tri­city. Their main char­ac­ter­ist­ic is that paper is fed into a ‘jaw’ with the type on one side and paper on the oth­er. Some have auto­mat­ic feeds, so that paper does­n’t have to be sup­plied by hand for each impression.

These machines formed the main­stay of job­bing print­ers lettrpress work up to the 1980s, and are used today by print­ers for cut­ting, creas­ing and numbering.

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