Digital color printing positive offset printing

The early digital color printers faced many problems and limited their functions. Even though there are still some errors in the printed images, the quality is better. Non-uniformity and streaks often appear in the light-colored part of the printing. Some colors are different from the original color. In addition, there are restrictions on the paper or materials used for printing. In spite of this, many organizations have already purchased the printing press and produced a series of fine works. The advantages of digital color presses are that they consume less pigment in small batch prints, and they can also provide the personalized printing services needed by some organizations, so that all end users can obtain their own personalized prints.

The digital color printing press market has developed rapidly since 1995. Indigo and Xeikon improve the quality of their products and provide customers with better and more reliable printing services at a lower operating cost. At the end of 1999, Xerox launched the Docucolor 2000 series of digital presses with the advantages of low cost, high performance and excellent print quality. The appearance of The Docucolor 2060 immediately became the crown of the digital printing press. Canon also introduced the popular CLC 1000. When all digital presses print the same outstanding colors, especially Indigo's upgraded Turbostream models, prints are different from offset prints. The lustre of the color is dazzling, and the printed image shows a strong reflection from a single point of view. Moreover, the image seems to be a bit of a stumbling block to the paper, because the ink-jet toner cannot penetrate the paper like the offset printing and can only stay on the surface of the paper. In particular, dry ink-jet with a large amount of toner is very good.

Digital color has been widely welcomed by users

At drupa Expo 2000, digital color printing has become increasingly accepted by users, and more than 10,000 have been installed worldwide. After the drupa, we saw the future of the new generation of presses we are looking forward to. In order for the commercial printing market to use digital color presses to take the first step, digital color prints must look like offset prints. These technologies are in full swing and press manufacturers know how to print higher quality. Since drupa 2000, several new presses have been introduced to the market. Their prints are very similar to the common four-color offset prints. In fact, because the color gamut of the four-color ink jet for digital presses is wider than that of offset presses, the printed matter is superior to four-color offset printing in many respects. In other words, digital printers mediate more colors than four-color offset printers.

Powder inkjet printing will be able to imitate the effect of offset printing

In drupa 2004, digital color printing will impact on four-color commercial offset presses up to 3,000 impressions in many ways. Digital printing opportunities attract users' attention with "Offset Printing Effects", such as the Kodak NexPress 2100, HP Indigo Press 3000, Xerox Docucolor 6060, and iGen3. Among them, Kodak and Xerox presses use a finer-powder ink jet to print on the paper with almost no contact surface, and reduce the cooling rate so that ink can be dissolved in the paper to achieve the above-mentioned effect. Quality. As for HP Indigo presses, not only imitation offset printing, but also far more than other competitors. Many offset printing presses give up four colors and choose six or seven color gamuts for printing. However, printing on light or uncoated paper is not satisfactory.

Since digital color printing technology came more than a decade ago, manufacturers have been trying to imitate offset printing. The look and feel of offset printing is a standard for commercial color printing and is a requirement for printing press buyers. In Drupa, we saw the effect of imprinting offset printing on the above printing machine, but we can also see that other printing machines can also perform this function.

Digital color lite printers attract customers at low prices

In the past year, the development of digital color printing has reached another milestone. This is “Digital Color Lite”. A group of Japanese suppliers introduced new printing machines that are slower than the above-mentioned printers, and these color qualities are excellent. The printing speed of the printing press is thirty pages per minute and the price is less than 50,000 euros. There are new developments in color inkjet. The brand-new ink jet abandons to draw from cutting the bulk toner material, but selects the chemical material to make the toner. In this way, chemical toners can become finer, cleaner, and smoother when ejected. In addition, the use of lubricants for general ink jets (ie, the promotion of media) has also been drastically reduced at the time of inkjet, and the problem of light reflection has been solved. The printing effect is closer to that of ink. Currently, only Konica and Xerox use chemical toner in the market, but high-speed printing presses have not yet been adopted.

Printers should not ignore the impact of the "Lite" presses on the market. It will become a strong player in the future. Due to its high printing effect (very close to offset printing), it is expected that creative companies and companies that require less than 200 prints will use the “Lite” printer to print on their own and will no longer be assigned to printers for printing. In addition, the "Lite" press operates with the full digital driver provided by EFI. The printing quality is set and controlled to the highest level, and the printing color is almost the same as the product.

Cost is an important consideration

Whether digital color printing complements or replaces offset printing, cost is one of the important considerations for printers. Cost includes procurement and all operating costs. Basically, the cost of digital and offset presses is very different. Most digital press suppliers only provide meter readings, meaning that each print represents a "reading" fee paid to the parts supplier. Cost refers to the total operating cost, which includes inkjet supply, all repairs, replacement parts and technical support. This method of charging allows consumers to pay an additional inkjet fee. Heidelberg has launched NexPress presses with different methods of charging but with different charging methods. Consumers only need to pay for the inkjet, technical support and replacement of parts they need, which is similar to the charging method of offset printing presses. Regular maintenance and inspection services are the responsibility of the supplier. The difference with the offset printer is that its main parts need to be replaced regularly. For example, the image drum with organic photosensitive conductors and the conversion roller need to be replaced after 250,000 impressions. High-volume printers need to be replaced once a week. Printers charged on the basis of meter readings are not required to pay an additional replacement part cost, but NexPress users pay that fee. In short, only the operating costs of the advanced printing presses below 3,000 are comparable to those of offset presses. It is difficult to calculate more than 3,000 printing presses. Many experts also disagree.

Inkjet printers provide many applications

The digital color printing introduced by drupa far exceeds the brands and models mentioned in this article. We see that the printers introduced by Scitex Digital Printing are producing high-volume color printing at a very low cost. They originally used inkjet technology to reach 2,000 A4 impressions per minute. Their advanced nozzles are very close to the printing press offset printer nozzles, and different markets should be very interested. In addition, in the field of inkjet printing, a variety of printing presses use control-generation printing technology to print advertising creations, which compete with offset printing and screen printing. In fact, many posters and advertising creations have switched to digital printing technology. Various applications of inkjet printing on small boxes pose a threat to offset printing. Industrial printing also uses inkjet printing laminates and flexible package printing from Dotrix and The.Factory to reproduce the quality of gravure printing.