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By Noel Ward, Editor@Large So you go home at night, leaving the lights on because they turn off automatically. Your autonomous car drives you home and closes the garage door behind you. Back at the shop the 49 jobs in the queue run under full automation. Since no one is there you check in...

Consider a Riso. They come in various flavors and can be cheap to own. They mostly use oil-based inks and don' have the resolution of aqueous inks, but can do a good job. Worth checking out.

by Noel Ward, Editor@Large Back in the day when the digital printing market was not much larger than a few specks of toner on a page, a colleague snarked to me that the biggest crowd at a print show focused on digital printing was at a small booth selling equipment that enabled gold or silver...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large I was Skyping with some guy in Shanghai, wondering how much support I’d get out of a call to the far side of the world. I was in Germany and had bought Chinese software to convert a video file my normal editing software didn’t like. The guy in China apologized...

It's strange. I was thinking of Dick late last week, no idea why he came into my head, and now I hear of his passing. Dick was a total original. And one of the best, because he always said what he thought and was often right. RIP, Dick.

by Noel Ward, Editor@Large Color is in demand in all types of documents, making color management a critical part of Digital Printing 5.0. Managing color on one device/press can be an easy task with the correct tools and processes. But managing color to ensure printed pages are consistent and...

by Noel Ward Editor@Large Silly me, always being optimistic. I really thought that by now, 26 years after the first full-color digital presses were rolled out, that graphic designers might be a bit more savvy about the capabilities of modern digital presses. Nope. As it turns out, many are not...

by Noel Ward, Editor@Large [Download Digital Printing 5.0: Beyond the Press: Defining the Infrastructure for Operational Success ] So you pulled the trigger and put the big new printer on your shop floor. But success is not about the box. What makes a bottom-line difference is how you meet the...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large In this age of rapidly evolving technology knowledge can make the difference between success and mediocrity…or even failure. This goes way beyond knowing your customers and the markets you serve. These days, that stuff just lets you put up a sign and open the front...

by Noel Ward, Editor@Large Henry Ford used to say the Model T came in any color you wanted as long as it was black. That was pretty much how purveyors (and buyers) of digital presses and copiers thought until the mid-1990s. Toner was all black all the time. Then, along came a couple of presses...

This is not an unusual number in my experience. When we had both kids at home and on a moderate plan we were paying more than that ($18K-$25K) when you factor in deductibles and other out of pocket costs. OK, it was more because I'm a sole proprietor and had to pony up all the money, but it...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large On any given week one news source or another runs a story about Amazon. The stories go on and on about the company’s outsized influence, its enormous market capitalization, the impact its facilities have on real estate values, local infrastructure, and more. They all...

Thanks for the link. You're right, processing is the next step, and some of it is already happening, as your link shows. There's a lot of book production and direct mail are already heavily automated from job in to ship and mail. Automation is going to be more and more important is printing...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large, PrintPlanet.com What is time worth? This means your time or that of your CSRs, prepress technicians, press and finishing equipment operators, and even the people in shipping. What is their time worth, and how do you translate those hours into payroll, the dollars...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large If you have medium- to large-size Ricoh presses and printers and didn’t go—and you probably did get an invitation—you missed an opportunity to learn how to make your operation more efficient and profitable. I’m talking about Ricoh Interact 2019, held June 5th and...

by Noel Ward, Editor @ Large Unlike many industry events there was no sense of déjà vu when coming to the third edition of Xeikon’s Café in North America. Every one of these events has been an improvement from the one before and the level of value keeps increasing. Why anyone who has or is...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large In the average week (as if there is such a thing!) how many different jobs and projects are on your plate? If yours is like many shops these days, your work in process may span offset, digital, and large format work, along with direct mail, data management, maybe some...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large For the past few years one of the questions I’ve gotten from print providers running toner presses is along the lines of, “How much volume should I have before I move to inkjet?” It’s an excellent query and it shows that people are thinking. Then there are the ones...

By Noel Ward, Editor@Large Does any of this sound familiar? A few times each week a customer shows up or sends in a file that needs a lot of love. It’s usually work they don’t want to do (or can’t do) themselves and involves making sure a stack of pages will be professionally printed. Those...

mellowyellow, Sales people are always baffled! They think whatever they sell is perfect and can do anything. You have to talk with the technical guys. This can take some effort. KM and Konica have doubtless tested lots of foils and substrates so they probably have an answer.