Thoughts on digital printing

[Thomson Litho]

Hi guys,
I have just signed up to this and was wondering if any of you could help me in my quest....
I have just started at a commercial printers in the UK and as the name suggest, Thomson Litho, it was originally set up as a litho printers and although we have morphed into many other services such as digital printing whilst offering may finished goods such as shrink wrapping etc, we do still receive many jobs that require web/sheet fed printing.
However, we realise that digital is becoming a greater force and at present we only have mono coloured and I am looking into how valid it would be to invest in a multi-coloured digi printer that would allow us to try and gain greater amount of jobs. No over in the US I realise there will be many more printers and so I hope some of you can help.....I am looking for advice, perhaps from those whose companies have made the transition into more digi printing, maybe I terms of % jobs.......maybe % increase in turnover???? Also maybe just general views on what would be the best machines to get......
I am asking this as the MD has, for obvious reasons and rightly so, wants to remain litho but I am just looking to see if I can offer him anecdotal evidence to show that by expanding we would not compromise our current offerings but simply offer more and hopefully increase turnover.......

Thanks very much

Allan
Marketing
Thomson Litho
Thomson Litho

 

[cosmo]

Hi Allan,

good to hear from new members.

My take on digital printing is mixed, first off, what is it really? Digital defined is 0's and 1's sent to an interpreter to rasterize an image, in the world of Xerox, Konica, Canon etc, that means instead of making a copy of the "Glass" as in old times with photocopiers, the data gets sent direct to the machine via a rip (interpreter) and then printed through the same analog machine, but, this time, with greater colour precision.

Then, there are the DI machines (direct image), Screen Truepress, Presstek, Heidelberg etc, the digital data is sent to the plate imaging and then printed once again in analog format, at higher resolutions because of the sharper dot.

Next thing is cost, Photocopiers which are called digital printers, which are actually printing digitally up to a point are still just that, photostatic devices, the best ones will do 1200x1200 interpolated and do a very nice image and there advantage is short print runs and book work, ie, a 100 page book of 50 copies will smash an offset press on price, I like the Konica 6500 and the Xerox 5500 for this type of work, speed and low cost is the name of the game, I have used the Canon Imagepress, they are great machines but really suffer on heavier weight stocks, which they are trying to improve, but as far as image quality goes, the Canon wins here but on price is too high.

Now onto the DI machines, in my opinion a waste of money, for the price you pay for one of these you can buy a sheetfed offset machine, a platemaker, a collater, a guillotine and some other finishing equipment, but, they tell you that you save money by not having a press operator, but, from what I have seen, a press operator on a traditional offset press will have less grief than these things, I have seen at least 3 companys been stung by these machines, especially the Heidelberg DI which sold for massive $$ when they were released, and now worth more money as a boat anchor.

Then, there are the very high end digital machines, the IGen (Xerox) & Indigio (HP), in Australia they will cost you no less then $400,000 for a base model, quality is very good and service depends on who you buy from, I can tell you Curries in Australia that sell the HP have a very poor reputation on supporting these big pieces of crap.

So, what you want to do depends on what you want to sell to your customer, I would recommend looking at all of them I just mentioned, one thing that you will not get from any of these is offset quality, try as they may to convince you, it just aint so.

 

[Michael Josefowicz]

Alan-
I think that Cosmo has pretty well covered the tech options. I'll try to pick up on the "what you want to sell your customer".

My three cents. Based on what I see from the Thomson Website, it looks like you have good penetration in the publishing industry. That implies that short run book and ultra short run printing should be a natural. The thing is that this is already a pretty crowded space, at least in the US. (Booksurge and LightningSource are the two big players). From a defensive point of view, my take is that to protect your core market it's going to be necessary to offer the short run b/w digital books, fast- to-market option. Check out this article at Book Business Digital printers try to shed the ‘digital’ differentiation from offset, and stress the value of short-run in any book’s life cycle. Plus, a list of 20 leading North American digital book printers : Book Business

The problem is that doing digital books profitably requires a bit of a learning curve. The tech problems are not really a big deal. The real problem is that the culture of digital is very, very different from the culture of offset. Very Short runs, collecting money for very small quantities, real time tracking and very quick turn times.

My top of the head advice is to look for a great partner who is already in this business in the UK. Make some kind of OEM deal. Test the market. If it has traction consider buying equipment or continuing an OEM relationship.

I also noticed that you have a plant in the Czech Republic. You might want to consider offering your clients the ability to print short runs there to deliver to central and eastern Europe. I would assume there is a significant advantage in both time to market and shipping costs.

The last thing that comes to mind about black and white books is offering the ultra short run functionality for the University clients. It's perfect for all kinds of things in that setting.

Re: full color digital.
You also seem to be in the kitting business and have lots of clients that do serious marketing. This is a natural for full color digital printing. It's should be an easy sell - ultra short full color runs and personalizing the kits and the info in the kits. But the same problems of a different culture is a long climb. Plus with color the tech at high consistent quality levels is non trivial. I think the partnering approach would be the right way to learn what's involved. If it works, buy or partner going forward.

 

[Craig]

Allan,

Here is my take on digital printing from a small shop. Digital printing is not, nor will it ever take the place of offset printing. But it does compliment it well. To me when the term digital printing is used it means a "toner" based electro-photostatic device, not a DI press (which I agree with Cosmo is a waste of money, but that's another thread).

We run all our color work on a Xerox DC8000AP, we do not have the capabilities to run 4 color on an offset press, I only have duplicators. We have found over the years that our customers run lengths are between 250 and 3000 when we just look at letter sized prints, with the majority falling between 500 and 1000. After crunching the numbers we have found that these are more profitable to run on a electro-photostatic device vs an offset or DI press. We also are running more and more VDP jobs which can only be printed on a electro-photostatic device. Again it's not offset, but the quality is right up there depending on the machine, the average customer really couldn't tell if it was printed on a press or not IF they don't know what to look for.

As far as the best machine to get, that an opinionated question that will really never get a good answer. I like my DC8000AP, it prints well on all smooth substrates, but like most electro-photostatic devices they don't image well on textured stock. It's very reliable, fast and requires less operator intervention then something like an iGen/Nexpress/Indigo. The best way to find out which one is best for you is to demo as many as you can with jobs that you have run on the press and see how they compare.

Good luck!

 

[Thomson Litho]

thanks guys

thanks guys

Thanks for all three replies. As i stated i ahve only recently joined the printing industry so my knowledge to say the leats is limited. I have been brought on board to look into aspects where from a sheer business P.O.V where i thought there seem to be a gap, hence my questions on digital. Again, thanks for the quick replies.
I will just expand a little on our companies offerings. As one of you stated we do have a plant in czech, that was due to, as i gather, because a few years ago one of our main contracts moved from the UK out there and so it was more economical for us to set up out there than lose the work and so we have a perfect way of feeding the european market, however there machines are not quite up to the standard as the UK's. As for types of runs we do, our web presses can do jobs up to say 600,000 and so thats where most of our business comes from, mostly blue chips requiring vast amounts of manuals, etc. However, being the new face to the company i was coming with loads of 'why' questions especially in terms of 'why' aren't we also getting that small run job for say, 500 calenders, and this is because our sheetfeds ovbiously by the time our make ready is etc, we are being priced out by digital companies. And hence......we cant we offer this range. Obviously our company have been succesful for many years but i am just investigating if we should invest in a digital colour to offer this for our clients, as if last month we had i think 368 estimations, scoring about 4% of these....mostly the blue chips which out of all in terms of value nearly dominate it, but it the other, even though they are not as lucrative but a job is job and especially the way the market is going but i am having to do some more number crunching to find out exactly how much this could value at, also we do not advertise or get our sales guys to try and push for these smaller jobs so if we did there could be a whole load there. I reckon the type of machine we could be aiming for is the Xerox 700..... but again not sure.
As one of you rightly pointing out we also do knitting and also that plant list is not quite up to date so we also offer shrink wrapping, etc and so we nearly offer a one stop shop and so i also feel that by going into a colour digi we wont be losing our identity but simply making the logical step into offering ever service.

Again guys, thanks very much for your opinions, very much appreciated, i hope you are all well and if you feel you have more to say on this i would again appreciate it.

Allan

 

[X33]

check this site : Digital Printing: Production Printers, Digital Printing Press Models, Large Format Printers

click where it says BOOKS & MANUALS

 

[Thomson Litho]

cheers, just wondering was there something specific on the pages or was it just to give me a clearer view of the the industry??

 

[[email protected]]

digital printing

digital printing

Toner and Ink Jet are the way to go for Digital printing. The DI will soon become a dinosaur. In my opinion it is a want to be offset machine that will cost big bucks. If you need DI printing why not consider the DI Directory that the laser boys put up and get a quote for the job you need and broker it Why spend 300K-500K when someone else already did. If you wish to truly print buy a real offset press and a CTP system to support it. If you wish to print digital go with Toner or Ink Jet. You will have VDP capabilities also.

Digital printing is still an infant so watch what you buy and look at the costs closely.
Ryobi, Hamada, Sakuri etc all make great auto presses to aid in your quest. Also the Screen TP344 is nice! IGEN make sure it does solids and DI make sure the PMS colors match.
Best of luck
OG