The future of digital printing (on)

A few days ago, Drupa 2004 press officer Bernd zipper interviewed Frank Romano, an outstanding person of the Rochester Institute of Technology, about the future of digital printing. Mr. Frank Roman0 believes that the choice of digital printing technology is huge, and the future can be predicted from the changes in the system itself.

The future of digital printing is different. For example, Oce believes that toner systems should be developed, Heidelberg prefers digital offset printing, and some people think that digital offset printing will “dead” and inkjet printing will gain great development. What is your opinion on the future development of this field?

Frank Romano: What I want to say is that the printing technologies that you mentioned will have a place in the future. No technology will completely disappear. There are now traditional printing processes and digital offset printing. For example, the DI system uses the on-machine direct digital plate making process. For pure digital printing, most of the toner systems are adopted, but some inkjet systems are also gaining market share. In addition, some new printing processes are also emerging, such as El Corsy in Montreal. In the future, each technology will have further development, continuously expand its business scope and meet certain market demands. For example, traditional gravure printing is mainly applied to the printing of catalogues, promotional advertisements and large quantities of live jobs. For example, in 1950, the printing of stamps dominated the market, but now it has become the world of offset printing. Digital printing quality has only been recognized by people since 10 years ago, and color digital printing is even more nearly five years. Therefore, each printing process has its own development stage, market and application range.

Let's go back to the topic of digital offset printing. It is a cost-effective printing method for small-volume products. Do you agree?

Frank Roman0: Yes, direct imaging in the machine can greatly save production time. For small-volume printing or on-demand printing, digital offset printing is easier to achieve high efficiency and low cost, while traditional offset printing cannot meet the personalized and differentiated demands of printed products. Therefore, digital printing has advantages over traditional printing in the following two areas.

First, the book is printed on demand or only one book is printed.

Secondly, for rich and varied personalized printing, digital printing has a fast response time and shorter preparation time. Therefore, it has attracted much attention and favor in this field, especially for short prints with less than 500 copies. Book printing, personalized prints, and personal direct mail printing. It can be said that each printing technology has its own unique application field. In the past, we believe that the quality and speed of digital offset presses will certainly increase, and the cost will be reduced accordingly. In the end, we must divide up some of the traditional printing markets. However, due to the fact that traditional offset printing is somewhat unsatisfactory for printing jobs between 500 and 2000, the current digital offset printing press will position itself between traditional printing presses and digital printing presses. I believe that all these processes will find their right place because of the diversity of applications.

When printing printers, media service providers or advertising agencies invest in digital presses, should they target specific market applications, or should they lock in a special customer base, such as HP Indigo?

Frank Roman0: I think this may happen in the magazine field in the future: It may be difficult for readers to determine which printing method the printer is using, whether it is gravure or offset, or a combination of both. This situation can also happen to media and advertising agencies or other customers who have asked the printer to print several copies of the product. The printer then decides which printing method to use. But I think it is very important to inform the user of the printing technology used.

There is also a quality difference between the toner printing system and the inkjet printing system, but if we see new solutions such as HP Interval and the upcoming NewGen and NexPress, as well as six-color or more color large format inkjet printers, Knowing the quality is quite high. In the future, we will see further improvements in quality, and we also need a workflow that can send the same data to different output devices. This is the challenge. I think that in the future, designers will not specifically specify whether offset printing or digital printing will be required. Only the required number of prints, say 1,000 copies, will be determined. Then the printer determines what printing process or combination of several processes is used. .

Digital printing will not be limited when it comes to finishing

Frank Romano: No. One of the problems with digital finishing is that the products you can produce have certain limitations. For example, if you have a carton digital processing system, you can only use it to produce cartons. If you have a newspaper digital processing system, you can only use it to produce newspapers. In general, the printing materials and business scope of most printing factories are relatively wide. Therefore, the post-press processing and finishing of printed materials must be processed externally.

This is back to the topic of a specific application. This means if we are. It only limits itself to printing, and outsources the finishing of finishing after finishing or the completion of cooperation by partners. The latter can obtain more markets than all its own processing.

Frank Romano: Yes. Like digital printing and digital offset printing, the printing process can be completed quickly. Therefore, most printing companies must provide complete processing services. Because the cost of processing outside the job is too high, most printing companies will still configure their own processing and finishing systems. In the United States, most digital printing plants already have their own finishing systems.

Are these printers equipped with a full set of processing capabilities or are they focused on specific products?

Frank Romano: It depends on their specific business situation. If it is a printed book, they will be concerned with the processing of the book; if it is a newspaper, they will be provided with a folding machine, a paper cutter and a binding machine. But usually the choice of postpress processing is limited. We have already said that the scope of business that digital printing can provide is expanding. I think this is also Heidelberg, Stahl Division. MullerMartini, Standard, Borg and other companies' future development direction. The secret of success in digital printing lies in the combination of processing and finishing.

Because the market needs "complete" products

Frank Romano: You need to complete a product, not just a part of it. This is the problem that companies like Xerox are facing. They can quickly print a single four-color print, but this is not enough for a printer. They will say: After printing, we must also fold, match, staple, and cut, and finally hand over the customer to a complete booklet. This poses a challenge to machine manufacturers: they must be able to provide corresponding solutions. To produce a booklet, a printer must start with unprinted paper and finish the final product. This is the difference between technology and demand. With the ever-increasing variety of prints, more suitable post-finishing finishing systems are needed.

Another concern is the quality

Frank Romano: I think that the quality level that most buyers of print products recognize and accept is generally lower than the quality standards we set, but of course it also depends on the specific product situation. Most digital prints today are accepted by end users and they do not have too strict requirements. Because, whether the print product can be accepted more depends on how high the customer expects the print quality. If a certain printing method has a simpler process, higher production efficiency, and lower cost, even if the printing quality is slightly inferior, customers may accept and recognize it, which is why digital printing is widely used.