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The marriage between digital printing and offset p

2022-09-26

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The marriage between digital printing and offset printing

now many people think that offset printing technology is a dead end, because they think that digital printing technology is newer and more advanced than it, and has a bright future. However, even if offset printing technology has come to an end (not everyone agrees with this view), there is still a long way to go before it really dies

therefore, before you turn the pile of rotary presses into digital printing equipment, consider the benefits that printers can get when using offset printing and digital printing at the same time. In some cases, for the same living parts, the effect of which printing technology is selected is the same, because they have their own advantages, which are enough to help the printing factory complete the work smoothly

printing customers or salespeople may feel that they are the best person to decide which output method to choose, and they know what kind of printing products they need. Roy Grossman, President of sandy Alexander company in California, focused on the development of functional fiber products such as recycled polyester fiber, raw liquid colored fiber, conductive fiber, graphene modified fiber, flame retardant fiber and so on. He asked the following simple questions:

* what is the best time for conversion? If the printing factory receives a short version of an emergency movable part, it's best to choose digital printing. If the movable part takes a month to complete, it's necessary to choose an offset press with high production capacity

* how long is the conversion time? Generally speaking, short edition means digital printing, but large quantities of live parts need offset printing machines

How important is printing quality? High end cosmetics companies like Clinique may have higher requirements for printing quality. Completely correct color matching (which may cause controversy) is difficult to achieve for digital printing products

* does it involve a lot of personalized printing? If the answer to this question is yes, the ideal solution is digital printing of variable data. A large number of data operations are in line with the characteristics of digital technology

is not always competing

not everyone regards these two technologies as two opposite service items. In fact, they can complement each other to form a complete multimedia solution. 66% of the revenue of commercial communication companies located in Hartland comes from the supply chain management services they provide to domestic manufacturers. Their customers include Rockwell, John Deere and Kohler. Brent hegwood, President and chief operating officer of the company, pointed out that printing is only one aspect of the information dissemination process

Hegwood commented, "we bind all value-added service items with packaging products, so that we can provide our customers with complete solutions and help them reduce costs. Around their own workflow, we armed them with on-demand printing, traditional offset printing and powerful web printing technology."

he continued: "The choice of output mode is determined by many factors, but our real purpose is to help customers make correct decisions and meet their information dissemination needs. This can only be achieved through network technology, because it can carry out a detailed analysis of a series of information, such as: who is the customer? What service does he want to book and his favorite disseminator reason: what is the mode - hard copy or electronic document? This can ensure that All shareholders can get the latest information in the most effective way to measure the deformation of the sample when needed. "

foxfire printing and packaging company believes that it can better serve all customers only when it has multiple printing capabilities such as offset printing and digital printing. Among all the registered customers of the company, 60% are retailers, and the other 40% are from the manufacturing industry. John Ferretti, CEO of the company, pointed out that in the actual production process, offset printing and digital printing technologies are used at the same frequency, and there is no difference between the light and heavy. Both of these technologies have excellent small format and large format printing capabilities

workflow is not a problem for Ferretti and FOXFIRE. They established their own digital printing plant in Maryland through acquisition. Their offset printing factory is located in Newark. The geographical gap is not a problem. In fact, the workflow in the two factories is very similar

general workflow

in fact, for most printing plants, mixed workflow is easy to implement. Grossman of sandy Alexander said, "we use the same workflow in digital printing plants and offset printing plants. If you are in a PDF environment, there is no difference between the two workflows. Because PDF can bring you an accurate workflow."

"Feng Shui" is a kind of Chinese culture, which will not play a big role in the realization of the highest work efficiency. Hegwood believes that the gears of commercial communication companies are closely meshed, and the company can use seamless production processes to support the two production methods of digital printing and offset printing

Hegwood said, "some companies use digital and offset printing technologies to produce the same moving parts. Many steps in these two workflow processes are independent, such as post press processing, which extends the time to send products out or to market, thus directly or indirectly increasing the cost of customers."

color reproduction quality is an urgent problem, and it is also a problem that pushes offset printing technology to many high-end application fields. No one can deny that the digital printing technology based on toner has significantly shortened the quality gap with offset lithography technology. In addition, application is the decisive factor in the selection of technology

jack McGrath, deputy sales and marketing manager of DS graphics, said, "digital printing has laid a solid foundation in terms of quality. Primary color products still have to face the problem of Pantone color mixing and color matching. Some customers will have this idea, but to a large extent, they are affected by the limitations of digital printing technology."

at present, there is no final conclusion about the quality gap between offset printing and digital printing technology

According to hegwood, "the quality of digital printing is very close to that of offset printing, especially in color printing. In many cases, digital printing can meet the quality requirements of customers."

if you want to understand the progress of digital printing technology in quality and convenience, you can use two technologies to print products such as logos for large retailers like FOXFIRE. These products can be produced by three printing methods: offset printing, digital printing and silk printing

ferretti said, "we use three technologies to print the same set of products, and the final color effect is very similar. People use offset printing, silk screen printing and digital printing to print images with very similar colors on the three substrates."

grossman believes that digital printing has reached a satisfactory quality level in 50% of printed moving parts. Some well-equipped printing plants will also use color management solutions, which can greatly narrow the quality gap between digital printing and offset printing

grossman said, "however, if you want to copy a large number of high-quality prints, you should not choose digital printing, because the share of digital printing in the high-end commercial printing market is only about 20%, and it still has a long way to go to overcome offset printing."

to be fair, not everyone has such high requirements for the color quality of digital output. Personalized content has been integrated into variable data digital printing in the field of one-to-one marketing and data processing

grossman said: "It is personalization that separates printing enterprises from the commodity industry. If you don't plan to make yourself different in an effective way, for example, through personalization or online printing, you are wasting your time. Now many factories are using digital printing equipment, and this number is expected to grow further. If you happen to be in this industry, there are no characteristics There is no advantage. "

information databases have brought countless business opportunities to digital printing service providers

ferretti explained, "if you want to know the response rate that these two methods can bring to you and how much money you need to invest in them, then I want to tell you that the return rate of digital technology is higher."

having digital printing and offset printing at the same time can make the printing factory avoid outsourcing some products, thus retaining resources and improving the cost efficiency of production. Moreover, although many printing houses regard their printing services as a single resource solution, these two competing technologies have actually become each other's catalysts, and they jointly promote the development of printing enterprises in the market

will people one day be able to use digital printing technology to print long edition and achieve ideal printing quality and color effect? Maybe one day, it will never be right away

ferretti said, "on the whole, I feel that offset printing is slowly losing in front of digital printing, but it will take some time for digital printing to really defeat it. You should also be able to feel that at this time, although we don't know how long offset printing technology can last, the future must not belong to it."

art of sales

when it comes to who and how to sell offset and digital printing services, it is difficult for people to reach a unified opinion. Some printing houses think they need to hire full-time sales staff, but they understand the essence and complexity of digital printing. But some people expressed their different views

Roy Grossman, President of sandy Alexander, said: "You need a full-time salesperson. First of all, you don't withdraw the offset printing salesperson from the sales work of the offset printing cylinder. Second, the offset printing salesperson often has to consider a big business of $10000 to $1million, rather than a small job of $3500. The digital printing salesperson usually comes from a technical background. Finally, we think that you really need a full-time salesperson to help you expand the market."

in the process of sales personnel talking about business, there are many factors that determine the impact of the sales agreement on a given printing plant. For example, the size of the printing plant, the area it serves, and so on. But it is certain that the support of it and network service departments in the factory is the most important

Brent hegwood, President of commercial communications, said, "our salespersons are growing with digital printing technology, and their knowledge is very rich, but we still provide them with strong support through it and electronic services departments. These departments also work closely with the prepress department to ensure the automation and continuity of the workflow."

information source: must win