The early digital color printers encountered a large number of problems, making the machine unable to achieve the desired goals. These machines can also produce excellent color images, but there are considerable deficiencies, color patches are often not printed, there are ink bars, some colors can not be printed accurately, there are restrictions on the paper or other available printing materials. However, there are still many companies that have invested in this product to produce a wide range of printed products. Its advantage is that the few jobs with a small number of prints can be printed economically in color. Several companies also use digital printers to print personalized jobs. The printed products can be personalized according to the end user.

After 1995, the digital color printing market was rapidly developed. Indigo and Xeikon improved their products, improved quality, increased reliability, and reduced operating costs. Xerox also introduced the Docucolor 2000 series of digital presses at the end of 1999 with higher performance, lower cost, and excellent quality. The Docuc010r 2060 quickly became the most sold model of this type of press. Canon also entered the market with the CLC 1000, and sales are also very good. All of these models are capable of printing excellent colors, especially the new Turbostream press of In-dig0. The printed sheets do not look like offset printed sheets. The colors are dazzling and bright. The printed images look from a certain angle. Reflective, it is thought that the image effect benefits much from the paper, because the toner is basically attached to the surface of the paper and does not penetrate into the paper like offset printing. This is even more true on dry toner printers because the toner used in this model has a relatively large particle size.

Digital color acceptance by the industry

On drupa 2000, digital color presses were generally accepted, and more than 10,000 machines were installed throughout the world. At this Drupa, we also saw a product that hinted at the next generation of models, a model that can be seen in the future. In order to really start using digital color printers in the commercial printing market, these printers are required to produce products that look like offset printing. The technology that can do this has begun to develop rapidly, and printer manufacturers already know how to produce higher quality prints. After drupa 2000, some new models entered the market, and the prints they printed were very much like traditional four-color offsets. In fact, it has surpassed four-color offset printing in many places. This is because the color gamut of the CMYK toner is larger than the gamut of the offset ink, that is, the digital printer can produce a richer color than the offset ink.

Toner printing looks like offset printing

In drupa 2004, digital color printing really started to challenge four-color offset printing in many commercial printing sectors with 3,000 impressions. The most eye-catching models are the “offset” models of those printed products, such as the NexPress 2100 from Heidelberg, the Press 3000 from HP Indigo, and the Docuc 0l0r 6060 and iGen 3 from Xerox. The printing units of Heidelberg and Xerox achieve this level of quality through the use of finer powders. The toner is transferred from the surface of the interposer to the paper with almost no contact, and the temperature at which it is slowly lowered fuses the toner to the paper. The HP Indigo model prints very much like an offset print, unlike other manufacturers' products. Many models print on the color gamut the color gamut of a six- to seven-color offset print rather than a four-color offset print. area. However, they also have problems. For example, the quality printed on lightweight paper or non-coated paper is not very good.

Digital color printing has tried its best to be offset printing for more than 10 years since its first launch. Offset printing is the standard for commercial color printing, and it is the customer's expectations for print. At this session of drupa, we will certainly see the quality of offsets printed by the printing press mentioned above, but we can also see that other products can also do this. I am optimistic about Canon's new model and its quality is better than the current presses.

Low-cost, entry-level, compact digital color presses

In the past few years, digital color printing has made great progress. This is "digital color simple type." Many Japanese suppliers have introduced such new products. Their printing speed is slightly slower than the aforementioned production-level printers, but they have excellent printing quality. Most of these presses can print at up to 30 pages per minute at prices below 50,000 Euros. Several of the models use newly developed color toners. These toners are chemically synthesized rather than ground from bulk pigments. These toners produce particles with smaller particles and clearer shapes, making it easier to flow. This last point means that the oil used in conventional toners can be greatly reduced. By reducing the amount of oil or developer, the gloss of the prints can be less, and they can be more like ink. Currently, chemically synthesized toners are used on Konica and Xerox machines, but not on higher speed models.

Printers should seriously look at these "simple" models, because these models may be the printer's competitors in the future, they can produce high quality similar to offset quality. I think that this type of product can be installed in the printing department of some creative companies and companies, and it can be used to produce various kinds of print products with a print number below 2,000, which are currently left for printing outside. High-quality settings and controls on these simple models are usually performed by their digital front-end devices. These digital front ends are mainly provided by EFI.

Price comparison is very important

If printing companies plan to enter the field of digital color printing, a key factor to be concerned about from the cost point of view is whether digital color printing complements offset printing or competes with offset printing. This refers to the cost of the purchase, but it should first be the operating cost of the equipment. In most cases, the cost of digital presses is very different from offset printing. Most suppliers can only provide the cost of considering only a single print. And we are concerned with the overall operating costs, including not only toner, but also usually all the costs of maintenance, spare parts and support. In this case, the cost of toner is another calculation. Heidelberg and its NexPress work in slightly different ways. Toner, support and spare parts are paid on-demand, in other words, the same way as an offset press. They have done most of the routine maintenance and maintenance operations performed by NexPress operators. Although most spare parts need to be replaced at regular intervals, it is still different from offset presses. For example, manufacturers recommend replacing organic photoconductor imaging drums and transfer rollers for about 250,000 prints. On a heavy-duty machine, change this ratio every week. Those machines only count the cost of a single printing, and the owners of the NexPress machines have to pay for these items, which is not comparable. If the company evaluates the digital color printers it purchases, it will need to understand different cost items. No matter which method is used to calculate, the operating cost of the most productive machine plough can compete with offset at the number of prints under 300 oz. However, it is very difficult to really calculate how many print runs are equivalent to offset printing. Many experts have different opinions on this issue.

Inkjet printing of a variety of applications

On drupa, the digital color presses will have many more models than those mentioned here. We will see presses from Saturn Digital Color Printing, which are very large and the cost per color sheet is very low. This model uses continuous inkjet technology to achieve a speed of 2000 A4 format color sheets per minute. The color quality of their latest printheads is close to the quality of newspaper color printing. For many market branches, this may be very interesting. There are also various types of printers that use on-demand ink jet technology in the inkjet field, which can compete with offset presses and screen printers in poster-type jobs. In fact, most posters and posters have already turned to this digital color technology. Inkjet printing is also competing with offset printing in applications such as short-format carton making. In the market for film and flexible packaging printing, Dotrix and The. Factory model, the quality can reach the quality of gravure.

Drupa 2004 will be a good place to compare the current state of development of various types of digital color printing and assess whether this technology can compete with existing printing processes in terms of quality and cost.