Look at digital printing in the digital age

Digital printing is the direct printing of digital data. It has four major features: one is the digital form; the other does not require the film; the third does not require the printing plate; the fourth uses the toner. It is slightly different from the computer directly to the printing press (CTP). The CTP is also the printing plate made on the printing press, but the printing is exactly the same as the ordinary offset printing press.

Advantages and disadvantages

Compared with the traditional printing mass production, the role of digital printing is to realize the publishing requirements characterized by personalized printing, variable data printing, instant printing, and on-demand printing. It can meet customers' time requirements, location requirements, and quantity. Requirements, cost requirements and certain characteristic requirements, etc. to provide related services, printing advantages are summarized as follows:

1, easy to change data, design, color and text;

2, do not need to prepare;

3, short-run printing costs are reasonable;

4, personalized printing;

5, suitable for different versions;

6, on-demand printing;

7, can be distributed printing;

8, simple operation;

9, "infinite" repeat printing.

It is inferior to traditional offset printing in printing quality, speed, specification, color (such as spot color or metal color) and batch cost, but it is superior to ordinary desktop printers and color copiers, and is particularly suitable for printing jobs with 100-1,000 jobs. CTP can be used for jobs with 1,000-10,000 impressions and 10,000 or more for conventional offset presses.

Domestic and foreign markets

In recent years, with the rapid development of digital technology, digital printing has been used not only for large-scale, personalized printing of publishing and printing, but also for the large-volume packaging and printing industry.

Recently, the mail well printing company headquartered in the United States used Heidelberg's packaging and label design production system Packpilof to produce product labels for various crystal brands of wine products, foods, beverages and other products. Its live work can carry out the necessary RIP processing, trapping processing, and can well complete the digital imposition. It is a pioneer in the digital technology of packaging label printing companies. At present, most label printers still perform continuous drying of the film by hand, which is inefficient. For example, film stripping of the film for processing labels may take a whole day, and with digital processing, it takes only about 90 minutes. In addition, the system also has one of the most important features. It can digitize the customer's manuscript. Even if the job is to use manual film stripping, it is very easy to modify the customer's manuscript.

Digital technology is also playing an increasingly important role in the printing of flexible packaging. Prinfpack, a large packaging and printing company headquartered in Atlanta, United Kingdom, has been acquiring digital prepress equipment, including computer-to-plate machines. At present, the degree of digital work has reached 85%-95%. Because the company specializes in long-run printing, when customers request printing of short-lived samples, the company often cooperates with another digital printing company. The latter recently installed an Ommins one shof color press. This computer direct printing system prints shorter versions with shorter delivery times and the printing costs are significantly lower than the sample costs for flexographic printing.

Due to the rapid development of digital technology, digital technology has enabled packaging label printers to use computer-to-plate technology to eliminate the use of film in prepress processing. As computer-to-plate is increasingly used by more and more packaging and label manufacturers, with the continuous integration of digital printing technology with processing capabilities, films and plates will be eliminated in the production of on-line packaging labels.

In 2003, the global digital printing market used 900,000 tons of paper, which increased at a rate of 30% annually. If color copying and laser printing are included together, the total amount of four-color color digital printing accounts for 10%, and black and white digital printing accounts for 60%. In foreign countries, digital printing is commonly used for printing reports, customer catalogs, corporate albums, business printing, and small-scale books and magazines. Kemiart coated paper, such as Finland's forestry company, can be used to print a variety of graphic products such as postcards. Business cards, covers, pamphlets and CD sets; small packaging such as medicines, health products and gifts; can be used for proofing, promotion, testing, distribution, etc.; can also be used to print wallpapers, belts, and lace papers.

In the next few years, short-lived editions will continue to account for 60% of the total volume of books and magazines. Design and production systems for packaging and labeling will also use digital printing. In China, the digital printing market has a certain amount of demand space. The output value of China's printing industry is about 200 billion yuan, of which 5% is suitable for digital printing business, that is, 10 billion yuan, and the market has great potential for development.

Mainstream printing machine

In the mid-1990s, Xeikon's color digital printers in Belgium took the lead in entering the Chinese market. At the beginning, most of them entered the Chinese market through OEM methods. For example, Agfa, IBM, etc., Xeikon black and white digital printing machines in the domestic market are many, mainly concentrated In the banking, postal and telecommunications industries. Xeikon black-and-white digital printing presses have the advantage of rapid technology in the printing of commercial papers today, especially large amounts of variable data and personalized data. At present, hundreds of units have been installed in the fields of domestic telecommunications and postal services.

Now Xeikon company in addition to the original OEM partners, in the domestic development and development of their own VAD agents, directly using the Xeikon brand to sell color, black and white series of digital printing presses. Shanghai Xinan Information Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai Fine Arts Printing Factory and Shanghai Printing (Group) Co., Ltd. have successively purchased several Xeikon CSP 320D single-sheet color digital printers. Currently, Xeikon's DCP 320DX economical color digital printing. The machine is most attractive to domestic users.