Editor's Note: Printing technology has always been a very important printing technology in the United States. An important feature of the new type of typographical machine is its increased level of automation and direct imaging capabilities. A significant development trend of the new type of typographic machine is the use of color management technology.
According to the US Department of Commerce’s estimate, the total value of commercial print products produced in the United States is 74.8 billion U.S. dollars per year, among which the total value of printed matter produced by lithographic offset printing technology is 58.4 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 75%. This shows that most of U.S. print products still use typographical technology. produce. At present, sheet-fed offset printer manufacturers are designing and manufacturing new types of equipment to meet various needs in the printing press market. Large-scale typographic printers have become popular products.
First, a high degree of automation of printing presses published by the United States Association of Printing and Publishing Technology Providers, a survey entitled "The current situation and future of the US printing press market" shows that most customers who purchase new printing presses have automatic printing functions. In a very important position.
Various important printer manufacturers are working hard to improve the performance of the printing press, and regard the automatic printing operation as the basic production standard to meet the needs of our customers. The features of the latest presses include: automatic alignment control, roller pressure and lateral eyepiece adjustment, automatic and semi-automatic plate loading, blanket cylinder and impression cylinder automatic cleaning, and fully integrated enamel color control panel. This will allow printers to reduce commissioning time to 10-20 minutes.
Sheet-fed offset presses have a short setup time and can print 15,000 sheets per hour. Therefore, the productivity of such a printing press is very high: An example of an innovative attempt at automatic printing presses is Heidelberg's CPC32 prepress interface device: This device can process the data provided by RIP according to prepress. Automatically preset the ink keys, there is no need to scan the plate: description.
In addition, Heidelberg's CP 2000 color touch screen display (operated in the windOWsNT environment) allows dynamic control of the press during high-speed printing production (including changing the alignment position and ink supply): The CP2000 can be stored in its standard memory. Into the production data of 250 jobs for the repetitive production of jobs. The degree of automation of small presses is also increasing. As monochrome copier type printers are being replaced by digital copy/printers, many printer manufacturers are working hard to develop highly automated small presses. For example: According to the Japanese company Yoshiaki, Yoshiaki is the latest The 3304HA4-color A3 size printer developed by the company has only 6 minutes of preparation time for adjustment. This printer has a semi-automatic loading function and is equipped with an off-line computer direct plate-making device that can produce printing plates.
Another example is ABDick, which has long produced monochrome printers. ABDick has developed the Century 3500 2 printing units, A3 size printing presses with the characteristics of large printing presses. Like the companies of Leung Ming and ABDick, more small printing press manufacturers will continue to increase the degree of automation of their products. Increase the number of printing units.
Second, the press super-largest ever-largest single-sheet paper use, the traditional color-code control method is likely to be eliminated, the use of color management technology in the sheet-fed printing press operations, will be flat sheet production of sheetfed Have a profound effect. In the traditional work plan for proofing by comparing proofs, the proofs are regarded as standards, and a highly skilled press operator adjusts the thickness of the ink layer on the printing press to obtain the same print quality. With the ColorSync color management workflow, the lithographic press automatically adjusts and calibrates the relevant data based on pre-defined color profiles. Fewer and fewer users use the proofs-based workflow, which will ultimately result in the elimination of analog proofing solutions. Digital proofing, due to the use of calibrated precision presses, enables stable quality proofing within a moderate tolerance range, thus paving the way for the promotion and application of computer-to-plate technology.
Third, the promotion and application of CIP 3 technology CIP 3 technology (integration of prepress, printing, and postpress operations) will soon have an impact on the sheetfed printing market. The CIP 3 technology is characterized by the input of the job parameters into the digital prepress file through the CIP3 print production format (PPF), which integrates the prepress, printing and postpress operations, for example, in prepress job preparation documents. It will store data such as the size of the sheet, the ink supply, the imposition of the folds, and the finishing process. As the job is passed in the CIP 3 workflow, the machine equipment compatible with the PPF job format will be automatically adjusted according to the data stored in the PPF job file. According to the survey, many production prepress processing equipment, printing equipment and postpress Manufacturers of processing equipment have agreed to adopt the PPF standard. However, customers who purchase new printers rarely consider whether the press has CIP3 technology capabilities. Most customers plan to completely replace all production equipment, so CIP 3 technology and equipment will slowly affect. However, in the next ten years, the automatic printing technology using the CIP 3 standard will certainly be more and more popularized and applied.
Third, full of prospects From the development point of view, sheet-fed offset printing technology is moving in a different direction, for the scale of production and product markets are different printers. Raising the degree of automation and shortening the preparation time of tuning is one of the major development directions. The high degree of automation of the press is easy to operate, but the requirements for operating skills are reduced. In fact, the latest offset presses with direct imaging capabilities have minimized training requirements for press operation. As employers continue to face the problem of shortage of skilled workers, the printing machine has a promising future from a human resources perspective. More and more color management technologies will be used in digital prepress operations. We will also see more and more printing companies make proofs based on the characteristics of the press, rather than rigidly trying to let the press meet the technical specifications of the proofs. There is no doubt that in the next five years, lithographic printing presses will be inferior to digital presses in the short-run color printing market, especially variable printing, but they will use various substrates, coating materials, and spot colors in the field. On the other hand, lithographic presses have greater flexibility than digital presses. According to interest orientation, lithographic printing presses have a lot of room for development.
In general, after we enter the 21st century, lithographic offset printing machines will remain the most economical graphic transfer equipment in the printing industry.