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Printing > Section 5 Securities and Certification Printing

In a variety of prints, there is a very special kind of print, which is the securities and licenses. The so-called marketable securities refer to a kind of certificate that has a certain price and represents a kind of ownership or creditor's rights. Currency is an intermediate medium for the exchange of equivalence of goods. Because it has its own price, the currency is considered to be securities, like bonds, bonds, treasury bonds, stocks, cheques, and other notes. The currency is divided into minted metal coins and printed banknotes. Banknotes are also known as banknotes. Because they are light and thin, they can be printed in large quantities. Therefore, banknotes have always been the most important form of currency circulation. Certificates, like ID cards, passports, credit cards, etc., are also printed materials and are proofs of things and identities for specific purposes. Although it has no price, as it has a special role, as with securities, it requires certain anti-counterfeiting functions. Although the stamp is not a currency, it cannot be circulated as securities in the market. However, its price and security have the same side as currency. Therefore, the stamp printing is also regarded as the printing of securities.

Printing> First, banknote printing

Banknotes are special commodities that can be exchanged for the same commodity in the commodity society. Almost everyone has to deal with it. Due to the special requirements for the security of banknotes, the process of natural banknote printing and the processing of raw materials are not the same as general printing. It is a printing plate, paper, and ink made with special processing. It is printed in a strictly confidential and closely managed printing factory with special printing machines.

1. Contemporary Chinese Banknote Printing Industry

China is a large country with a vast territory and a large population. It can be imagined that the circulation of banknotes circulating in the Chinese market is very large. This requires a certain capacity for printing banknotes to maintain the normal circulation of banknotes on the market.

On December 1, 1948, the People’s Bank of China was established. It is the national bank that governs the country’s finance and currency. The bank note printing factory is directly managed by the head office of the People's Bank of China, which is based in Beijing. The modern Chinese banknote printing industry was developed on the basis of several original banknote printing and minting factories in Beijing, Tianjin, Shenyang and Shanghai. In 1949, more than 10 banknote printing and minting factories under the jurisdiction of the People's Bank of China. Most of these factories are small in size and equipment is backward; the structure is irrational and they are completely concentrated in several large cities on the eastern coast, with uneven distribution.

In the early 1950s, the People’s Bank of China adjusted the original banknote printing and minting facilities and handed over some factories in Shanghai, Tianjin, and Shenyang to local general printing products. For example, the Shanghai Iron and Steel Plant of the People’s Bank was handed over to Shanghai. The city reorganized its printing machinery manufacturing plant, the Shanghai People’s Machine Factory later; on the other hand, it built a new banknote printing plant in Xi’an, the Xi’an People’s Printing Factory. In the year of 1978, the Tianjin ink factory was handed over to Tianjin and replaced by the Tianjin Light Industry Department to become the ink factory in Tianjin.

With the support of the Ministry of Light Industry in 1956, the People's Bank of China built a paper mill in Baoding, Hebei Province, specializing in paper money. This is the first paper mill that specializes in the production of banknote printing paper. The banknote printing paper produced by it will provide a solid material foundation for the future development of the Chinese banknote printing industry and improve the anti-counterfeiting performance of banknotes.

China's third five-year plan began in 1966. Due to the consideration of the international situation at that time, the country was completely in an atmosphere of "preparation for war." For this reason, the People's Bank of China began to build a rear banknote printing base in Sichuan in 1965, forming a banknote printing machine including special machinery for printing and printing money. Banknote printing industry conglomerate companies for paper production, banknote printing plants and ancillary facilities. Since then, it has successively built banknote printing plants in Shanxi and Jiangxi, which has enabled China's printing productivity to increase considerably over the past.

In the process of creating a new banknote printing production base in the Mainland, it was a decade of civil unrest during the “Cultural Revolution” and the construction of the base was inevitably disrupted. After the "Cultural Revolution" ended, especially after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh CPC Central Committee, some deviation practices in the past in the construction of the mainland were corrected and the layout of these factories was re-adjusted. In the 1990s, China’s printing industry was rationally distributed in the east, west, south, and north. It had a professional division of machinery, paper, and banknotes in the structure, and formed a complete, modern banknote. Industrial system.

2. Technical progress of securities printing

The printing of securities, especially the printing of banknotes, puts a layer of mysterious outer yarn on the production of banknotes for the sake of special requirements for anti-counterfeiting and strict secrecy management in production. Therefore, outsiders know little about the technical conditions of banknote printing.

Although banknote printing has its own particularity, the banknote is a printed matter in the end. It is also the original manuscript. It uses a plate-making and printing copy transfer technology to transfer the ink from the plate to the paper. Therefore, the printing process is still a printing process. Different from general printing, it only has some special requirements for plate making, ink, banknotes, and printing machinery. Therefore, people often regard printing of banknotes (or securities and licenses) as special printing. In this sense, the technical progress of banknote printing depends, in the final analysis, on the progress of the entire printing technology.

(1) Platemaking technology.

In order to improve the anti-counterfeit performance of the securities, it is not always a single method to print, but instead, two or three types of printing methods are selected for overprinting, embossing, and gravure printing.

Engraving Gravure is the most commonly used and most important printing method in the printing of securities. The used printing plate is the engraving intaglio. Engraving gravure is divided into hand carving and mechanical carving. Among them, hand-carved portraits, landscapes, and buildings are the most common. Rather than hand-sculpting, it is more of an art than an art. It is a sculpting technician with personal artistic cultivation. According to the manuscript's artistic style, the theme of expression, and the composition of the picture, the change of tone, etc. On the plate, different shades of different shades are drawn, and the different combinations are dense, making it possible to reproduce the verve of the original. This is the perfect combination of art and technology by the engraver's use of special technological conditions for the secondary re-creation of works of art. This picture, which is based solely on points and lines, has a strong artistic appeal and a high degree of anti-counterfeiting performance. Even the most skillful carving technicians, the same two pieces carved with the same manuscript, cannot be made indiscriminately. This shows that hand-engraved gravure can no longer be copied by hand. Therefore, for decades, hand-engraved intaglio has always played an important role in securities printing.

Generally, hand-engraved gravure screens are used as the subject screen of securities, and they are placed in prominent positions. Some words, geometric patterns, or patterns are used as foils around the screen. These patterns, patterns, and shading are mechanically carved. This kind of engraving machine is a special machine for making engraving and gravure, and it is only used in the production of a few banknote printing factories. Generally, a printing factory does not have such conditions.

Plain printing is also often used in securities printing. Photolithography will use photolithography. In terms of photocopying of banknotes, it is no different from ordinary photolithography. However, the layout of a banknote version is very small. A large plate layout is made up of scores of dozens of coupons, commonly called impositions. Prior to the 1950s, the imposition work was entirely manual and the labor intensity was high, and the accuracy of the imposition was not high. Since the 1960s, successive automatic cameras and automatic serial printers have been continuously added, which has not only improved labor productivity, but also greatly improved the accuracy of imposition.

(2) Printing technology.

The banknotes are divided into main currency and auxiliary currency according to the value of the denomination. In order to enhance the anti-counterfeiting ability of the main currency, the main currency is generally printed with an intaglio printing plate with a strong anti-counterfeiting ability. In the three printing modes of flat, convex and concave, the pressure of gravure printing is the largest, and the printing speed is the slowest. Before the fifties, the gravure printing of banknotes was a platform gravure printer. The printing plate is placed on the machine platform, and the platen runs along the square route. In the square operation, the process of inking, erasing, printing (embossing) and uncovering the paper is completed. These processes rely mainly on manpower operations. It can be imagined that the labor intensity of workers is very high.

In 1954, fully automated rotary gravure printing machines were imported from Germany. Since the 1960s, domestic rotary gravure machines have gradually replaced the backward platform gravure machines, which have not only improved the quality of printing, but also greatly reduced the labor intensity of workers. Gravure printing is also an important part of gravure printing. The original machine was manually operated on the platform machine. After the rotary printing, the machine was automatically wiped with a plastic aqueous solution machine, and a new technology for recycling the rubbed solution was also realized.

The gravure banknote printing process also carried out another important reform in the 1960s. It changed gravure gravure printing to dry paper gravure printing. Old-fashioned wet paper gravure printing must wet the paper before printing and drying after printing. Instead of rotary printing after gravure printing, it not only eliminates wet and dry processing of the paper, but also improves the printing accuracy and production efficiency of the paper.

Since the 1960s, banknote printing plants have also used a dry offset printing technology. This type of printing is actually a combination of relief printing and indirect offset printing. The printing plate is a relief printing plate. The relief printing plate - of course, such a printing plate cannot be as thick as a typical relief plate and requires a thickness of about 1 mm - is mounted on a plate cylinder of a special offset printing machine without a water supply device. The ink on the relief plate is first transferred to the blanket cylinder, and then transferred to the sheet by the blanket cylinder to complete the printing. Since this plate does not wet the plate with water but uses a rubber roller, it is called a "dry offset." Patterns such as shading and patterns on banknotes are often printed using dry offset printing. This is also a printing method rarely seen in ordinary printing plants.

(3) Anti-counterfeiting technology.

The speciality of banknote printing is that it uses a series of anti-counterfeiting technologies. Over the past 40 years, with the advancement of science and technology, the improvement of comprehensive printing, the development of banknote printing technology, and the anti-counterfeiting technology for printing banknotes are constantly innovating.

Plate anti-counterfeiting technology. Plate-making security is the main anti-counterfeiting method used in the early printing of banknotes. When designing banknote patterns and patterns, some "marks" were intentionally designed. Under normal circumstances, it can still play a certain anti-counterfeiting effect. For more than 100 years, hand-engraved gravure has been the most effective anti-counterfeiting tool.

Paper security. General paper, although very good performance, does not have anti-counterfeiting effect. Since the People’s Bank of China’s Baoding Paper Mill was put into operation in 1956, China had its own banknote paper professional paper mill, and banknote paper had anti-counterfeiting capabilities. One of the paper's "watermarking" technology is one of the important anti-counterfeiting measures of banknote paper. "Watermarking" is the production of banknote paper in the papermaking process. When viewing "watermarks" under transmitted light, there are distinct patterns of light and dark transmitted light on the paper. Obviously, only professional banknote paper mills can produce "watermark" papers, which will play an anti-counterfeiting role.

Ink security. Ink anti-counterfeiting is also an important anti-counterfeiting method in contemporary security printing technology. On the fourth set of RMB50 round and 100 round face value papers, printed with "50" and "100" numbers with fluorescent ink. This fluorescent ink blot