printing

[mirage1]

What type of printing plates are used to make bank notes?

[dundurn]

Not quite sure what you're after. The plates were usually made of steel - copper plates would have been subject to too much wear. The plates were intaglio cut, i.e. the grooves in the plate held the ink, rather than the raised surfaces.

[wildwood]

The UK banknotes are printed using three different methods.

First they are printed in the normal offset litho method where paper mache-cardboard are formed and used to make zinc/lead rollers plates that print the notes (except the queens face and numbering). A separate off-set roller is used for each colour.

Secondly the Intaglio process as above is used to print the queen's face. The antaglio process gives the picture that "raised" feeling and is very hard to counterfeit.

Thirdly the notes are printed with the normal letterpress method but ofcourse the numbers are advanced automatically with each print.