Digital presses turn electronic output such as PostScript files directly into paper images without the usual intervening steps of negatives and plates. The technology is related to electro-photographic products such as color copiers, and manufacturers say the reproduction quality rivals that of Parade or Time magazines. And since there is no need to replate, digital presses enable small output runs---such as a luxury auto ad for one small, upscale community.
To date, discussions of digital presses have centered around whether they can replace conventional presses straight up. Tom Croteau, NAA's pre-press manager, contends they can---he points out that you can buy roughly 10 Xeikon digital presses for the $3 million price of an Urbanite and folder---but he says that's besides the point. It's time to think about distributed publishing, he suggests.
Croteau's vision calls for small, community printing plants producing local versions of the paper, rather than the current massive central facility producing tens of thousands of identical copies. Not only would this cut through distribution problems, he says, but it would also allow papers to produce content tailored for readers and advertising targeted for advertisers. "We could get some of those insert ads back inside," Croteau says.
"What if the Washington Post bought 1,000 Xeikons instead of the huge Mitsubishi presses they're installing?" asks Croteau. "They could put one out in every community."
"Xeikon is a roll-fed press that does four colors on both sides in one pass that can produce 2,100 11-by-17 pages per hour," explains John Williamson of Xeikon manufacturer AM MultiGraphics. "The quality is similar to that of news magazines. The printer, which accepts standard PostScript files, uses an electro-photographic, or copier-style, process to place 7.5-micron droplets to form the image.
"Prices range from about $315,000 up to about $500,000," Williamson says. "The one for $500,000 can store 10,000 color pages....You could have a separate paper for each household, which would be really nice for advertising."
Indigo America's E-Print press produces 500 11-by-17 four-color sheets per hour, according to Indigo's Denise Shans. "The E-Print [press] is the logical back-end system for the new database-centered front-end systems," she says. The E-Print's four-color electro-ink process outputs at 800 to 2,000 dots per inch on a 144- to 200-line screen. A fully configured system runs $500,000 and handles PostScript and Scitex input.
While Indigo and AM MultiGraphics adapt digital technology to the newspaper world, MAN Roland Inc. introduced an alpha version of its new digital offset press at Drupa '95. The Dicoweb Litho uses a direct thermal-transfer process for printing, which allows cleaning and re-imaging without replating. The press is currently only a concept and demonstration, not an available product, stresses Man Roland's Craig Simon. But it is where the company is headed, he says.
Chris Feola is the News Systems Editor at the Waterbury (Conn.) Republican-American. His E-mail address is cjfeola@aol.com .
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