For a long time, digital printing seems to bear many people's dreams about the development of future printing technology. It is not easy to stumble along the way, but the pace of development of digital printing has never stopped. Since Indigo launched the world's first truly digital printing press at IPEX in 1993, digital printing technology has made great progress in terms of hardware, software and materials. The drupa exhibition, which is the vane of the development of printing technology, this year is more focused on inkjet printing. The turbulent wave of digital printing development can be seen. The author will try to present the latest development prospects of digital printing technology by introducing the development of various aspects of digital printing technology in the past year.
Equipment
In drupa2008, 64 exhibitors exhibited digital printing machines, which shows that the large team of digital printing equipment manufacturers. With the fierce market competition among various manufacturers, digital printing equipment has developed rapidly. Throughout the main products of major manufacturers, digital printing equipment has shown the continuous improvement of printing speed and the quality of printing is almost even more than offset printing.
No matter when, speed is always one of the focus of people's attention. Compared with traditional offset printing, if digital printing equipment is to print images close to offset printing, its speed will be much lower than that of offset printing. For digital printing equipment manufacturers, it is the only way to let digital printing challenge offset printing and increase the speed of high-precision color printing in digital printing systems. While digital printing is improving the printing speed on the premise of ensuring the printing quality, it currently shows two significant development directions, namely the improvement of the printing engine and the enlargement of the printing format.
1. Engine improvements
Kodak ’s Stream concept gives us unlimited imagination about high-speed digital printing systems. This concept machine can print the printing quality of the current Kodak digital color printing machine in a 44cm wide rotary system, but the speed has been greatly improved, up to 2500 pages / minute, and the applicable medium range is wider. The image quality analysis report by SpencerLAB, an independent digital imaging test company, pointed out that the Kodak Stream concept printer can achieve an offset quality equivalent to 175 lines / inch, and the color gamut of the Stream concept proofs is larger than the color gamut of 175 lines / inch offset proofs. %, The black density is 29% higher than that of offset proofs. This continuous inkjet printer developed by Kodak for 4 years has the potential to replace offset printing, and traditional offset printing equipment manufacturers may already smell the competition.
In pursuit of increasing printing speed, digital printing equipment manufacturers have improved their printing engines and upgraded their original products. Taking HP as an example, the company will launch a new Indigo 7000 printing press with a maximum speed of 240 pages / minute. Its 812 dot / inch, 8-bit / pixel recording head can process 775M pixels per second. Xerox ’s newly launched iGen4 is also known as the “highest productivity and best quality sheetfed digital printer in the printing industryâ€. Compared with its previous generation iGen3, its production capacity has increased by 25% to 35%, and It is capable of producing offset-print and photo-quality images and continuous colors at a speed of 110 pages / minute.
In addition, Xerox Concept Color 220, a concept machine introduced by Xerox, achieves an output speed equivalent to 2 times that of iGen3 digital printing machine by integrating two digital printing machines together. At present, the main high-speed web digital printing machines on the market are HP Indigo 7000, HP Indigo W7200, NexPress s3600, Oce JetStream 2200, Xeikon8000, InfoPrint5000, Versamark VL2000 and so on. The speed and accuracy data of some of the above equipment are shown in Table 1.
2. Wide format digital printing machine
When it comes to wide format digital presses, Inkjet Web Press has to be mentioned. This web printing machine with a printing width of 762mm is specially designed for the newspaper, book and direct mail markets, and the maximum printing speed can reach 2600 pages / minute. According to HP's official statement, the color printing cost of this machine printing 30% full version of 1 page A4 paper is only 0.01 US dollars, and the cost of black and white printing is only 0.0015 US dollars. If this machine can be launched as scheduled next year, it will become the fastest and lowest cost digital printing press.
Although the application of inkjet technology is quite mature in the field of large-format and ultra-large-format inkjet printing, in the field of wide-format digital printing, the progress of inkjet printing technology has only shown strong development momentum in recent years. Thanks to the advancement of nozzle technology, more and more manufacturers can manufacture nozzle arrays with the same width as the printing machine, so that one inkjet can cover the entire format without the need for paper to pass through the nozzle multiple times. Greatly improve the speed of inkjet printing. At present, representative products of wide-format digital printing machines include Jet Press 720 of Fujifilm, QPress of Jadason, and Truepress Jet SX of Screen.
Truepress Jet SX is the world's first inkjet printer with a cutting function. The target market is the B2 format market. You can use inkjet technology to achieve the production speed of offset presses, which is 1600 sheets per hour. Jet Press 720 is developed by Dimatix, a subsidiary of Fujifilm. It uses a full-width (720mm) print head. This print head is composed of a high-density, long-life MEMS piezoelectric printing element array. There are 4 different sizes during the inkjet process. Of ink droplets, so 4 different printing densities can be achieved in one pass. Qpress is a surprise from Hong Kong-based equipment manufacturer Jadason. This is the world's first B2 format toner production digital printing press. Its highest speed and highest resolution are 100A4 pages / minute and 1200dpi, respectively. The main parameters of these 3 digital printing equipment are shown in Table 2.
It can also be seen from the basic parameters of the above three products that the current format of wide-width sheet-fed digital printing presses is mainly large, and has high printing speed and accuracy. The wide format is also conducive to compatibility with traditional post-press equipment, retaining the original equipment investment results and reducing investment costs. [next]
Software articles
Some experts pointed out a few years ago that with the advancement of high-speed inkjet systems, speed and print quality are no longer the bottleneck restricting the development of digital printing, but typesetting software, digital workflow software and digital content production software that support high-speed digital printing systems Whether it can meet the needs of the fast-growing digital printing market will become a difficult point for future development.
1. Digital printing workflow
In the case where common printing and variable data printing, black and white printing and color printing, single-page printing and on-demand printing coexist, the complexity of the workflow has increased geometrically. If the smooth printing process cannot be guaranteed, the advantages of digital printing will be greatly reduced. However, while major digital printing equipment manufacturers spare no effort to develop advanced hardware equipment, they have not neglected the development of supporting process software. Such as HP SmartStream digital printing process management system launched by Hewlett-Packard, FreeFlow by Fuji Xerox, PRISMA by Océ, etc.
The production process of "Roll Over Gutenberg" book just displayed on drupa2008 in the past shows that the digital workflow is also important for digital printing. Under the management of the Oce PRISMAprepare process, the two digital printing machines Océ VarioPrint 6250 (black and white) and Océ CS650 Pro (color) closely cooperate with the processes of the front end and the back end to complete the entire production process of the book "Roll Over Gutenberg". The entire workflow is managed by Océ PRISMAprepare, which separates the black and white and color parts of the document and ensures that the data on each page is correctly sent to 2 sets of black and white or color digital printing equipment.
PRISMA is mainly aimed at the workflow of digital printing, while FreeFlow is further, dedicated to the integration of digital printing and traditional printing digital workflow. The latest version of FreeFlow realizes sharing and interaction with the two process information of Prinergy and Fuji XMF. It can send printing jobs from the digital printing system to the CTP equipment or from the offset printing system to the digital printing system. The success of FreeFlow may make us believe that the digital printing workflow is beginning to take over the future mixed printing process.
2. Network printing platform
Although online printing can bring more convenient communication channels, lower costs, and faster services, how to smoothly convert customers' online orders into final products is a problem that manufacturers of online printing services must face . Although there are a lot of services for accepting orders on the Internet, there are few products that truly integrate the network printing platform into the digital printing digital workflow. The good news is that the development of the integrated network printing platform has been able to connect the ordering, creation, on-demand printing, bookbinding, logistics and other processes of the network to meet the requirements of fast, personalized and convenient network printing services.
In terms of products, Kodak's integrated network printing process solution is a good example. The Insite software in its product suite can realize the e-commerce function of online stores, and then cooperate with EyeMedia to realize personalized page paging and template software and PRINERGY process The system can realize the automatic management process of digital printing. Similar representative products include Agfa ’s web-based Delano management platform and Printable Technology ’s Web-to-Print solution.
3. Variable data typesetting software
Although most digital printing equipment will provide a certain random variable data printing function, if the variable data layout is completed at the time of printing, it is very disadvantageous for the management of the digital printing process, and its shortcomings of "what you see is what you get" It also increases the probability of potential errors. Therefore, it is very necessary to introduce variable data typesetting in the content production stage, which gave birth to the emergence of variable data typesetting software.
As more and more banks outsource bill printing services to digital printing service providers, variable data printing has become a new strong growth point in the digital printing market, which has also promoted the rapid development of variable data typesetting software. In the original commercial direct mail field, the data that the variable data typesetting software needs to process is relatively fixed, and the implementation is relatively simple. For example, the entry-level variable data typesetting software PrintShop Mail can easily complete such as personalized business cards, mail, direct mail Typesetting and printing of advertising and other products. Similar software includes XMPie's PersonalEffect, PODS's DARWIN VI Authoring Tool, and Huobi's Huobi variable data typesetting software.
Compared with the typesetting requirements of commercial direct mail products, the typesetting of bills is much more difficult, mainly reflected in the increase of variable data volume and variable data fields. This also puts forward new requirements for variable data typesetting software. However, many companies on the market have launched corresponding products, such as the Printnet Designer variable data typesetting software recently released by GMC and the newly launched by Founder Electronics. Wenrui Business Letter can handle the complex layout requirements of products such as credit card bills. [next]
Materials
The improvement of printing quality, speed and range of substrates for digital printing equipment is inseparable from the development of digital printing materials, especially digital inks and toners. With the increasingly fierce competition in the digital printing market, digital printing equipment suppliers have increased their investment in research and development of new inks and toners. In addition to the continued advantages of water-based inks and enhanced durability, the development of solvent-based inks, ecological inks, sublimation inks, UV inks and other electronic inks has made the alternative inks present a diversified development trend. . The innovative application of toner in inkjet printing has also brought us more imagination about the future of inkjet printing.
1. Water-based ink
With the increasing awareness of environmental protection, the use of water-based inks is becoming more and more widespread. The color gamut that water-based inks can replicate is almost the largest in all ink systems, so water-based inks have natural advantages in color performance. However, since water-based inks are generally based on dye and pigment formulations, their service life is between a few days and a month, and they need to be used in conjunction with special coated inkjet substrates, which limits the promotion of water-based inks. However, the introduction of the latest HP Latex water-based ink may solve this problem. It is said that Latex water-based ink can provide durable and excellent quality printing effects, suitable for a variety of media produced by Hewlett-Packard or non-HP, even if there is no film-covered product, the durability of the outdoor display can reach 3 years . However, the real market value and application value of this ink still need time to test.
2. Toner
Usually toner is used in the digital printing machine with electrostatic photosensitive imaging, and Crystal Point process toner of Océ company has innovated the application method of toner, as shown in Figure 1. The process uses microsphere toner, which is called Toner Pearls by Océ. This toner can be converted into a gel, which can be accurately printed onto the paper surface by inkjet after the toner is glued, and the printing effect is Half-light, the image will not change when it meets water. Because the toner did not dissolve during the printing process, the CrystalPoint process can obtain high-precision detail reproduction, and there will be no feathering caused by the spread of ink on the sharp edges. The latest ColorWave 600 digital printing press is the latest result of this new process.
3. UV curing ink
Xerox is developing a gel-curing ink specifically for digital printers that can be used for printing on metal foils, smooth-surfaced plastics, and cardboard, with a wide range of applicable media. The viscosity of this gel-cured ink is similar to peanut butter, and when heated, it becomes a viscous liquid like car engine oil. In the heated state, the liquid ink is squeezed out of the print head by inkjet and transferred to the surface of the metal sheet, plastic and other substrates. After cooling, the peanut butter-like viscosity is restored again, and the ink is cured by UV light curing equipment dry. However, the ink was only briefly revealed on drupa2008, and the specific date of listing has not yet been determined.
Although digital printing shoulders people's ideals for digital printing in the future, its development has experienced ups and downs. However, with the development of digital printing equipment, software, materials and other technologies, the cost of digital printing will become lower and lower, and the scope of application will also become more and more extensive. We have reason to expect a better future for digital printing!
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