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Part 1 - Printing Technology Trends Editor's Note: This is part one of a two part article on observations at Drupa 2004. Part one covers new technology highlights and indications of major printing industry trends. Part Two will focus specifically on technology and systems exhibits at DRUPA 2004 that represent new opportunities and challenges for business document (including forms) industry participants. DRUPA stands for "Drück un Paper" - printing and paper technology show held once every four years in Düsseldorf, Germany. The largest printing industry show in the world opened May 6, 2004 on a very positive note, with a record number 1,862 exhibitors and crowds of visitors from all parts of the globe. When Drupa 2004 closed 14 days later, a high proportion of the displayed machinery sported "sold" signs and exhibitors appeared to be pleased with the results of their participation in this printing industry extravaganza. This show sent a strong message that the printing industry is poised for a business upturn. The Drupa shows typically include not only the latest designs and innovations in printing equipment and related systems, but also a sizeable number of prototypes and technology demonstrations that provide a long-term perspective on changes and opportunities in the printing industry.
The previous show, Drupa 2000, took place during a peak period for the
printing industry in terms of both print producer and their supplier sales and
profitability. Since then, the last three years have been very challenging
for both printers and equipment suppliers and there is clearly excess world-wide
capacity to build presses and finishing machinery. In a presentation on
industry trends, Regis Delmontagne, president of NPES, the association of US
suppliers, indicated that member sales of equipment and supplies have declined
by close to 25% from the 1999-2000 peaks. As a result, one of the "big
news" at Drupa 2004 was restructuring by some of the major printing
industry suppliers and a definite trend towards more alliances, partnerships,
marketing agreements and consolidation among suppliers. Printers may see
more focused product lines from some suppliers, but the intensity of competition
among suppliers and pace of technology advances will not be affected. This includes Heidelberg's 50% share of Nexpress Solutions, the digital color press joint venture with Kodak launched in 1997 and Digimaster monochrome digital printer operations that Heidelberg acquired from Kodak in 1999. Heidelberg has announced that negotiations are continuing with Goss to sell the web offset press design and building business, which Heidelberg acquired from the Harris Graphic Corporation in 1988. Heidelberg will now focus on sheetfed offset presses, sheet finishing equipment, prepress and workflow products, with sales efforts directed mainly towards commercial printing, label and packaging applications. The dramatic restructuring of Heidelberg provides an indication of the special challenges of the digital printing equipment market and the serious imbalance between supply capacity and demand in commercial printing and newspaper web offset presses. At the start of Drupa 2004, Heidelberg announced that the German firm RWE A.G. has reduced its ownership from 50.02% to 15.0% of the company by selling Heidelberg shares to other investors. The Eastman Kodak Company, facing eroding demand for film products that parallels the challenges facing manufacturers of traditional forms, has taken a different approach to restructuring. At Drupa 2004, Kodak unveiled a new Graphic Communications Group (GCG) which consolidates recent major digital printing acquisitions into one strategic business unit. The new GCG includes the continuous inkjet digital printer manufacturing operations acquired from Scitex Corporation in January 2004 and renamed Kodak Versamark Inc. It also includes the NexPress Solutions digital color printing and Heidelberg Digital monochrome (Digimaster) operations acquired from Heidelberg and renamed NexPress Digital LLC. The two major acquisitions are combined with two existing Kodak businesses, Encad Inc., a maker of large-format inkjet printers and Kodak Polychrome Graphics to form the new GCG. This restructuring returns Kodak among the largest suppliers of digital printing equipment, focused primarily on high speed and high volume applications. At Drupa 2000, Xerox launched a program to sell offset presses with two types of Direct Imaging (DI) machines under the Xerox brand. Restructuring of Xerox businesses since then has resulted in discontinuation of the offset press program in favor of a focus on digital printing equipment and related software. At Drupa 2004, Xerox launched a major effort to capture a larger share of the high speed web-fed monochrome digital printing market and introduced new models that will gradually update the Docutech product line. Koenig & Bauer (KBA), a major supplier of large sheetfed and web offset presses, is entering the short run offset segment with a group of new models specifically targeted at specialized applications, such as printing on plastics and very heavy stock, and users who require highly automated quick-setup 4 and 5 color presses in the 13" x 18" to 20" x 29" sheet size range. MAN Roland has terminated a program launched at Drupa 2000 to sell its own brand of digital color presses. Agfa has made a major entry into digital color printing with the February 2004 purchase of the Dotrix ink jet printer business from Barco. At Drupa 2004, the Agfa-Dotrix exhibit featured a fast single-pass digital inkjet process color press - the.factory - in a roll-to-roll configuration printing webs up to 25" wide at close to 80 ft/min. Drupa 2004 had an abundance of other examples where equipment suppliers are divesting or acquiring product lines, forming alliances or making new marketing arrangements to serve growth segments of the printing industry or refocus their efforts on narrower core product lines. This means that buyers will have to evaluate not only equipment capabilities but also supplier strategies, commitment to product lines and future availability of supplies, parts and service. A sign of likely future challenges for established equipment suppliers was the strong presence of Chinese firms at Drupa 2004 . Their exhibits featured a wide variety of presses, finishing equipment, plates and other supplies. Some of the Chinese exhibitors touted ISO 9000 certification of their factories and their licenses to use the latest technology of partner firms in Japan. At this show, most of the Chinese exhibitors were either looking for distributors in Europe and U.S. or opportunities to produce machines, parts or materials for established European and U.S. equipment suppliers.
Unlike previous Drupa shows, this year it was difficult to find film imagesetters, and some of the remaining machines were demonstrated as polyester plate output devices. For offset printing, the industry has clearly shifted to computer-to-metal plate (CTMP) systems. Close to half of the CTMP machines at Drupa 2004 were based on violet rather than thermal lasers. The proliferation of violet laser platesetters is a major trend supported by availability of more powerful violet laser diodes that can image both silver-based and photopolymer plates. Violet-sensitive plates are now available from several suppliers. Advantages claimed for the violet laser CTMP machines include longer laser life and lower equipment cost than comparable thermal platesetters. ECRM introduced a new Mako 8-page violet platesetter at a price that the company claims is comparable to an imagesetter of similar size. At Drupa 2004, violet laser models dominated in 2 and 4 page format machines, while thermal laser technology was prevalent in 8 page and larger machines. Advantages claimed for thermal plates include long run capability, ranging to over 1 million impressions with post-baking. In the thermal category, Mitsubishi introduced a unique reusable wet offset plate technology based on an off-line machine that erases, re-coats, images and processes aluminum sheets or sleeve plates. Each plate can be reused up to 20 times and the special thermal image-forming coating is rated for runs up to 100,000 impressions.
Several Drupa 2004 exhibitors showed progress on both metal and polyester CTP systems using low-cost ink jet printers to image wet offset plates. Glunz & Jensen demonstrated their PlateWriter 4200 system which uses an industrial ink jet printer to apply a patented Liquid Dot(TM) ink-receptive coating on a plain anodized aluminum sheet. After imaging the plates are fed into a special baking and gumming unit which does not require any processing chemicals. Rated production speeds are 5 to 15 plates per hour, depending on resolution. Commercial availability of this CTMP system is planned for late 2004 or 2005. A different technology, using an ink jet printer to image a pre-sensitized aluminum plate, was shown by JetPlate Systems. A special Plate Marker fluid is applied to negative-working UV-sensitive metal plates, followed by conventional processing. TechNova Imaging Systems demonstrated a special polyester plate material that can be imaged by commercial high-resolution ink jet printers using pigmented inks. The imaged plates are ready for very short press runs or plate life can be extended to a rated 10,000 impressions by use of a fusing unit. While the various ink jet CTP systems are relatively slow, the low equipment cost and simplicity should be attractive to printers with moderate plate consumption. With the printing industry clearly moving away from the use of film, Drupa 2004 had a large number of exhibits featuring either new components or complete digital prepress systems to support CTP and improve productivity. With diminished use of film, the demand is clearly growing for digital proofing and Drupa 2004 signaled widespread acceptance of color management software and the latest high-quality color ink jet proofers that meet contract proofing requirements. Significant progress was also evident in using color-calibrated terminals for on-line proofing by printers, agencies and end users to reduce prepress cycle times. CTP gives better control of the printing process and dot gain, and as a result has rekindled interest in new stochastic and hybrid screening technologies to improve image quality and match a wider range of PMS spot colors with process inks. A wide variety of new and updated workflow software was on display at Drupa 2004 to link all printed project participants, from buyers to designers, agencies, prepress service suppliers, pressrooms and binderies. The ability to "plug into" common digital workflow systems and compatibility with the latest workflow-enabling standards, such as Job Definition Format (JDF) and the PDF file format, was a major overall theme of Drupa 2004. Complete linking of all printing plant equipment and print project participants to the point that orders can flow automatically through a plant and an electronic job ticket drives automated machine setup tasks is still mainly a vision. In conventional offset production, functions such as color control, trapping, screening and setting of press ink keys has been automated, but the overall offset print manufacturing process still depends on extensive manual intervention by skilled operators. The one exception to this, evident at Drupa 2004, was digital printing, where integration of high volume imaging and finishing devices with order planning and prepress tasks is so extensive that this method of printing is becoming a true computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) process. The issues of workflow, color management, interfacing of production devices and variable image printing are becoming so complex that new types of software suppliers and systems integrators are required to assist many printers in keeping pace with technology. Drupa 2004 had more of these systems integrators than previous shows and many of the major equipment suppliers were promoting new divisions specializing in consulting on workflow, JDF-based systems and variable image printing.
The large number of sheetfed offset presses and variety of new models at Drupa 2004 indicated strong world-wide demand for these machines. This is partly due to declining print run sizes in the industry and a large installed base of older sheetfed offset presses that are obsolete relative to the higher speeds and quick setup features of new models. Some of the latest sheetfed presses have paper feed rates that exceed 500 ft./minute. Sheetfed press suppliers indicated that most of their current sales are full-feature machines that typically replace two older and less productive presses. With automatic plate changing, blanket washing and resetting of feeder and delivery units, job changeover times in Drupa 2004 demonstrations were under 8 minutes even on 8 and 10 color sheetfed presses. MAN Roland innovations to reduce setup times on the Roland 700 press included an independent direct plate cylinder drive that allows simultaneous changing of all plates and washing of blankets. This design, new to sheetfed presses, also allows plate changing on selected print units while the press is running so that two print towers of a press can be used in a "flying" imprinter configuration to change imprint plates without stopping the press.
Five suppliers of web offset presses charted a new trend at Drupa 2004 with models designed for low-cost print repeat changes not constrained by gears. All five suppliers use inexpensive plate and blanket cylinder sleeves rather than heavy and expensive print cylinder insert modules. The enabling technologies are servomotor drives and computer control of web tension and registration. Some of these new plate and blanket sleeve systems can offer package and label printers offset quality and inexpensive plates combined with the low cost and quick print repeat change advantages of flexographic presses. In the blanket-to-blanket web offset field, the new 16 Max-V Diamond variable sleeve press from Mitsubishi joins the Dicoweb model from MAN Roland to give commercial printers low-cost print repeat and cutoff size flexibility. The other three new variable sleeve web offset presses are blanket-to-steel models, introduced by firms that are well known in the forms and direct mail industries. Drent Goebel was the first to show prototypes of their design in 2002, and at DRUPA 2004 demonstrated a seven color Variable Sleeve Offset Press (VSOP), switching between runs of a foil web in roll-to-roll mode and folding carton board in roll-to-sheet configuration. To emphasize the ease of changing print repeat, sleeves were removed and replaced for each run by two female demonstrators. Options on VSOP presses include flexo, screen and digital print units, hot or cold foil stations, laminating, punching, die cutting and in-line folding. A new 38.5" wide model LS-100 packaging offset press print tower with size-change sleeves was displayed by RDP Marathon. The uniqueness of their Sleeve Offset Lithographic Independent Drive (SOLID(TM)) technology is adaptation of plate and blanket sleeves to a modified 3-cylinder variable size press insert, a single servomotor drive for both the plate and blanket cylinders and retention of a press driveshaft. Users have unlimited sleeve size choices from 24" to 36" print repeat or the press can have several different sizes of conventional print inserts. Print towers can also accept flexo or waterless offset inserts. The first multi-color press with RDP Marathon SOLID(TM) technology is scheduled for installation in a European label plant. Muller Martini introduced the Alprinta series variable size offset press available in 20.5" and 29.1" web width for commercial printing, direct mail, packaging materials and labels. This is a completely servo-motor driven press with either conventional 3-cylinder size inserts or special cartridges designed for use of plate and blanket sleeves. It is still too early to gauge whether sleeve offset designs for label and packaging presses will be widely accepted in printing segments presently dominated by flexography, but some printers will certainly recognize the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage in terms of plate cost, print quality and running speed with sleeve offset presses. One of their challenges will be to learn how to print without bearers and the ability to pack plates or blankets.
The digital printing trends evident at Drupa 2004 can be summed up as "more, better and faster". Image quality on entry level toner and ink jet color printers today is comparable to the "top line" machines of just a few years ago. Major progress is being made in color ink jet technologies and the result was a large number of exhibits ranging from wide-format display printers to high quality proof printers and flatbed machines designed to image sheets of poster and carton board, glass and other flexible and inflexible materials. The range of ink jet applications has been broadened by new print head designs that can apply solvent, pigment-based or UV inks. The variety of applications was illustrated by Spectra Inc., a developer of ink jet heads used in many brands of printers, with a demonstration system imprinting variable color images on cookies. Show visitors lined up to consume the samples printed with edible ink. Another ink jet milestone was introduction of the Kodak Versamark VX5000e high speed color system with a new continuous ink jet print head capable of 300 x 1,200 dpi resolution at 325 ft./min. web speed. While the color quality of the VX5000e does not match the latest toner-based digital color presses, it should be very adequate for direct mail, statement printing and other high volume document production applications. A prototype color ink jet document press using drop-on-demand technology and an array of 600x600 dpi imaging heads from Panasonic was shown by Miyakoshi Printing Machinery Co. This digital web press, rated at 131 ft./minute, can be configured for up to 4 over 4 colors on 9.5" or 19.6" wide webs. Miyakoshi indicated that development work is also progressing on a new liquid toner digital color press capable of 1200x1200 dpi resolution.
Hewlett Packard introduced a new Indigo digital color sheetfed press, model
5000, distinguished by a configuration and appearance similar to many mid-range
digital color presses from other suppliers, combined with Indigo's unique liquid
toner and options for 4 to 7 colors. The Indigo 5000 has a sheet feeder
module with 3 trays that can hold the same or different papers. Each
machine can be expanded by adding up to a total of 4 sheet feeder modules,
giving a maximum of 12 paper trays. The Indigo 5000 will support up to 4
printed output stacking stations. This machine prints sheets up to 12.6" x
18.7" at 4,000 four-color 8.5" x 11" pages per hour. NexPress
Solutions Inc., now owned entirely by Kodak, promoted three versions of the
NexPress 2100 digital color machine to meet the requirements of different
buyers. This digital press is now available with 5 print stations.
The 5th station can be used for an additional color or to apply a special
coating which is baked in an off-line unit to give sheets a high gloss
finish. Enhancements on the Xerox iGen3 high speed sheetfed digital color
press include the ability to apply a protective UV coating over printed sheets
and new finishing options to bind, tape, fold and trim documents. The trend in high speed black toner web-fed systems is toward 19.5" web width multiple purpose machines because digital printing of books is one of the major applications and users want web widths that allow three 6" x 9" pages across. Xerox appears intent on capturing a larger share of the web-fed monochrome printer market based on new models introduced at Drupa 2004. The DocuPrint 1050 twin engine duplexing system is rated at over 1,000 images(8.5" x 11") per minute. It was demonstrated printing on a 19.5" pinless web and linked with a dual delivery system, one for transaction documents and one for perfect-bound books. The new generation of Nipson web-fed magnetographic black toner printers now feature 600 dpi image resolution and cold flash fusing which allows printing on films, foils, labels and carbonless paper. Nipson toner is suitable for MICR numbering. The Nipson Varypress 200 has a rated speed range of 98 to 230 ft/minute, while the Varypress 400 has a top rated speed of 410 ft/minute. Both models can run 20.5" wide webs with 18.5" maximum image width. Varypress 400 is designed for a pinless web, while the 200 model can run either pinfed or pinless. Delphax launched a new high speed monochrome web printer based on electron
beam imaging technology. The CR 2000 has a rated speed close to 2,000
pages/minute in duplexing mode, pinfed or pinless feeding options for webs up to
19.75" wide and compatibility with a wide range of coated and uncoated
papers. Image resolution is 600 x 600 dpi. The machine is designed
with two print engines for duplexing on full-width web without use of turn bars,
and it can be equipped with perforating, slitting and punching stations.
Delivery options include a rewind, continuous folder or document
sheeter. For a book production demonstration at Drupa 2004, the CR
2000 was integrated with Muller Martini page assembly, saddle stitching and
perfect binding stations in a versatile, fully automated and computer controlled
production system that exemplified true computer-integrated
manufacturing. Drupa 2004 exhibits showed that digital printing is graining the greatest acceptance for specific types of applications: business documents with variable information, short run books, manuals and directories, personalized direct mail, large-format color printing and short run on-demand or "quick color" printing. Almost every supplier of high speed digital printing equipment had some demonstration machines configured for printing business documents such as invoices, statements, checks, mailers, insurance forms, etc. It was clear that shifting work from conventional forms presses to digital presses is regarded as a major opportunity by most digital press suppliers. A significant trend at Drupa 2004 was the increasingly close integration of finishing equipment with both sheet and web fed digital presses. This included cutters, batchers, stackers, folders, booklet stitchers, perfect binders and book trimmers. While at many previous shows digital presses were linked with common available finishing machines, Drupa 2004 had a new crop of computer-controlled finishing equipment designed specifically for integration with digital presses. It is in digital printing and related finishing where the industry is experiencing the fastest progress towards print becoming a fully automated and computer integrated manufacturing process. The resulting digital printing productivity gains will gradually extend the economical run size ranges and applications where digital printing can compete with offset and flexographic production systems. This will be a major factor driving future growth of digital printing. Ivars Sarkans is president of consulting firm Sarkans & Associates of Los Angeles, California and a long time contributor to DMIA publications. He can be reached by telephone at (323) 221-7791 or by e-mail at <mailto:isarkans@sarkans.com> isarkans@sarkans.com.
Exhibitors Referenced in Article: A.B. Dick Company, Niles, IL
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