Digital Color Printing - Retrospect and Prospect

(Digital Color—Cleared For Take-off) In recent years, digital color printing has experienced rapid development. Printing companies have already noticed the benefits it brings to them. Digital color printing has become a favored object for the business community. Digital printing, which is becoming cheaper and more reliable soon, will greatly improve the quality of prints. Report from Heidelberg Since Drupa, Heidelberg, the “overlord” who produces offset presses, has announced that they have partnered with Kodak to produce a NexPress 2100 digital color press at a speed of 70 sheets per minute (ppm). Even NexPress's competitors recognize that Heidelberg's influence in the digital color printing field is important. Bob Barbera, deputy manager of commercial printing at Xeikon, said: “When printing companies like Heidelberg enter the digital printing market, it also proves that digital printing is profitable in the future direction of printing.” Mr. Barbera It is not the only one who thinks that digital color printing will become the most important development trend in the 21st century. Print Outlook 01, published by NAPL (International Printing Leadership Association), points out that digital printing will become an important demand in the market in the next two years. Moreover, Heidelberg predicts that in 2008 the output value of the digital printing market will grow by more than $4.6 billion from 420 million. Now, with the arrival of the second impact of digital color printing on the market, low-cost, variable data, on-demand printing has become a trend. In addition, because companies maintain a close relationship between their internal market and sales department, they can make the best use of the benefits of variable data color printing. Past problems In theory, digital color printing sounds very good, fast, cheap, on-demand color printing can be manipulated to deliver personalized information, who does not like this? But in fact, early adopters found that these were often overlooked. In short, the printing quality tends to pursue the appearance of smoothness and beauty; Indo-China will not be affected by proofing; image data storage tends to be permanent. Needless to say, no matter what kind of rumors are unpopular. To eliminate some of these problems, digital color printing may bring about a revolution in the printing industry. Ms. Linda Brcker, Xerox's international range color manager, believes there are three main trends that will change the printing industry and strengthen the development of digital color printing: · On-demand printing · Personalized documents · Distribution and printing capabilities Anyway, Ms. Becker points out these The trend does not mean that offset printing is a dead end but indicates a new development area. "Actually what we see is that the market needs a variety of different technologies." Ms. Becker explained: "People will ask, 'When you develop digital printing, does it mean that you no longer need traditional offset printing technology?', but actually No. Both of these technology markets are needed, and digital technology holds great promise in offset printing.” Merrill Clark, Indigo’s marketing manager, agrees with them. He compares the current situation with the introduction of scanning technology in previous years. scene. “When the scanner was just launched, many people in the market were skeptical, but when the market accepts this technology, everyone is now using a scanner. I believe that the same situation will occur in the field of digital printing.” The quality of Heidelberg's NexPress product NexPress 2100 was announced in the middle of this year with a good reputation that explained some customer and industry doubts: 70 sheets per minute, single side printing speed or 35 sheets of double sided printing speed, single Paper feeding device, based on CMYK four-color printing NexPress 2100 dual-sheet monitoring sensor, the paper machine ensures the stability of color quality, overprinting accuracy, and its DryInk system makes the single sheet more suitable for printing. To control downtime and downtime, the ORC (Operational Replacement Components) system allows printers to replace most of their components without tools or vendor services. Chris Payne, chief marketing officer of NexPress’s marketing department, declared: “The products we produce have good uptime and are nearly 90% usable. We have unique technology that allows printers to replace most of the press’s internals. Components." In addition to the ORC system, NexPress also uses Adobe Extreme technology. Digital color printing has been fiercely criticized in the past because of the limitations of the film base, and now the NexPress 2100 can handle coated, uncoated, and textured papers, as well as foils and transparent originals. It is also possible to sort pages and stack three different types of paper in one print ready for binding. Digital printing that we know is not everyone is excited about the emergence of NexPress 2100, so companies have a long way to go to compete. Ms. Becker criticized: “We don’t know how to digitize. We’ve been researching digital DocuTech for 11 years, but it’s not as easy as it looks. All the things that let us spend 10 years to learn, and now we have some experience with it. However, we must continue to learn.” The DocuColor 2000 series from Xerox goes hand-in-hand with NexPress. The 45ppm print speed of the 2045 machine and the 60ppm print speed of the 2060 machine make the cost per page about 10 cents. The Xerox digital press, which also uses digital blanket technology, can transfer images from four photoreceptor units to the paper to be printed, similar to offset blankets. By registering the roller and the sensor placed at the center of the sheet where the image is to be printed, overprint errors are greatly reduced. Both the 2045 and 2060 machines can achieve 600 x 600 dpi (pixels per inch). The automatic color calibration and process control system is called the I-TRACS recalibration image quality system. The DocuColor 2060 can print more than 3,600 sheets per hour. Indigo announced a list of digital color press makers on Drupa. Among them, UltraStream 2000, UltraStream 4000, and Publisher 4000 all had good results in the first half of 2001. They provide companies with a way to increase flexibility for printing special colors and increasing the speed of printing. With the ElceroInk (electrostatic ink) system - electrostatic charging of liquid inks - Indigo offers advanced solutions for higher quality colors than the standard CMYK-based printing range. "Because we don't use colorants or electrostatic printing-based technology, we have the ability to create different colors." Clark explained: "We have the ability to make five, six, or seven colors." IndiChrome OffPress's hybrid ink can be printed specifically Color and opaque white, they use purple and orange electrostatic ink and CMYK three primary colors to create a wider range of color rendering. UltraStream 2000 can achieve a printing speed of 240 monochrome single-sheets per minute, image resolution 800dpi, and 4-color single-sided double-sheet printing speed of 4000 sheets per hour. UltraStream 4000 and Publisher 4000 4-color single-sided, dual-output speeds of up to 4,000. The UltraStream series and Publisher 4000 all claim to accept unlimited film bases. Of course, Indigo still offers e-Print Pro and 4-color digital printing with a print speed of 2000 color prints per hour. Web Press Solutions When Indigo, Xerox, and other manufacturers are working on sheetfed presses, Xeikon has been successfully selling web presses for a long time. At Drupa, the Belgian company continued to promote the DCP 320D and DCP 500D, establishing a DCP/32D and DCP/50D sales platform. This also led to the machine increasing the printing speed: DCP 320D increased from 70ppm to 130ppm, DCP 500D increased from 100ppm to 130ppm, and as a result they can reach 3900 double-sided printing per hour. In combination with Xeikon's one-scan electronic imaging technology, new features include: pneumatic paper wheels (which simplifies the installation of reels and improves the rotation of very smooth paper), electromagnetic brakes (for precise control of web tension). Xeikon also introduced the CSP 320D to enter the sheet-fed press market. The CMYK-based device has an output speed of 960 sheets per hour, full-color double-sided printing, and 600 x 600 dpi. Xeikon's Bob Barbera explained: “Our unique ability is double-sided printing, especially for corporate needs, because they need to print four-color double-sided at one time.” Xeikon “uses” other vendors for long-term digital color printing Technology contributes. Among them, IBM used the Xeikon 500D to develop two new presses: Infoprint Color Plus and Color 130, with a print speed of 138 sheets per minute. The 130 machine is designed by the user as variable printing. It can be upgraded to Color Plus. The general function control preprocessing unit can be cached and printed and processed in parallel. When the print job has terminated due to an error, it can be resumed from the interruption. Restart. One of the biggest advantages of variable color inkjet printing digital printing over traditional offset printing is that it can adapt to different customer requirements for variable data printing on each sheet. Adding color to variable data makes digital printing more advantageous. According to VersaMark's Business Color Press (BCP Commercial Color Press), Scitex digital printing application inkjet technology to meet the high-speed printing, CMYK four-color printing, variable data printing, printing e-mail, statements, certificates and catalogs and other products, VersaMark BCP can be The output prints 2000 pages. The cost per page is less than 2 cents. The VersaMark web press can print 300 x 300 dpi images, and uses QuarkXpress typesetting workflows, screen proofing and hard copy proofing, and can be equipped with pre-RIP image processing and variable file devices. HP Joins Group Operations Since Hewlett-Packard’s recent decision to invest $1 million in Indigo and OEM companies to develop digital color printing products, the two companies have stepped up their efforts to develop a new, high-end digital color printing system. How does this system work? When can I go offline? Hewlett-Packard Company kept silent, but in the second half of 2001 they will release this product information. “We are looking forward to strengthening our co-operative market forces in the competitive arena of high-end digital printing.” Ken Cloud, Manager of Commercial Printing at HP, explained: “Our partnership with Indigo has brought us into the high quality field Competition stage."