Printing is now just one step in a digitally automated production workflow that starts at the graphic designer’s computer and ends with folded, stitched, bundled, and shrink-wrapped stacks of printed products awaiting shipment. Digital printing has come online over the last 20 years, and electronic “new media” have also come of age as an alternative outlet for advertising and publishing, so both printers and print buyers have a broader range of options than ever before. Yet sheetfed offset printing, with its unmatched quality in “critical colour” work and the lowest per-item price available for volume production, is holding its own against these competitors.
Although the sheetfed offset presses introduced over the last couple of years employ the same basic offset lithographic principles as always, they now come equipped with any number of digital bells and whistles to make the presses easier to operate, faster, more versatile, and more reliable. Most new presses, too, offer printable image formats that are an inch wider than traditional presses, in order to accommodate bleeds for added flexibility.
Critical speed
Central Reproductions in Toronto, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, had been running several different offset presses when the company decided to upgrade last year. Though the company takes on a variety of work, Central specializes in marketing materials, direct mail, and training booklets and related items for a corporate clientele. All of their work requires a high level of quality, but fast, efficient operation was even more critical.
Doug Snow, co-owner of Central Reproductions, said they were looking for greater speed to stay competitive in the midst of the current trend towards short-run work. The company installed a six-colour, 40” Heidelberg XL 105, in spring of 2006, replacing an older four-colour 25” press and a two-colour 40” press. The new press was Central’s second Heidelberg. The company also has a six-colour, 40” Speedmaster that remains in operation, but which doesn’t have quite as much automation as the newer model.
“What it really comes down to is how fast can you set up a job and get going,” Snow said. “The XL 105 runs 18,000 sheets per hour. And that’s all great and good, but because of the automation on this press and the colour management capabilities, I can makeready a job in 12 to 15 minutes. On the Speedmaster, it’s more like 45 minutes to an hour.”
“It used to be that you’d have several jobs going on that press that were in volumes of 50,000, 35,000, or 40,000. It wasn’t as critical to be able to do a quick makeready. But the way our industry is going now, instead of having three jobs in a 24-hour period of 35,000 each, we’re replacing that with eight or ten jobs of 3,500 each. Once you makeready a job and put it on the press, that job’s done in a matter of minutes. So the most important thing is how fast you can set up the press. And that’s where the XL shines.”
Central’s Heidelberg XL 105 was only the second or third of its kind in Canada, and few operators had any experience running it. However, the manufacturer provided training and support, and Snow said that with its higher level of automation, the new press actually requires fewer operators. The press comes “up to colour” faster and, with automated colour management, holds its level of colour without operator intervention.
“Just due to the press upgrade, we’re getting more agency-type business,” said Snow. “We are getting a higher level of press business from not only our existing clients, but our new clients. And I still have capacity on the press, so we’re in a good situation. The press just gobbles up jobs.”
Doing more with less
Japanese press manufacturer Komori has long emphasized the high level of automation on its sheetfed offset presses, which range from the smaller-format (19” to 26”) Sprint and the newer, highly automated 26” to 29” SPICA, all the way to its new 41” Lithrone LSX series presses.
For Accell Graphics, located in London, Ontario, the ability to print on both sides of heavier stock was a key reason driving their installation of an eight-colour 29” Komori Lithrone LSX perfector. The company does diverse commercial printing work, but specializes in calendars and greeting cards on 14-pt. paper and produces the cards with some very fancy finishing. Accell had been running two- and four-colour 29” presses, but for much of its specialty work, had to run the job twice to print both sides.
“The commercial work we do is generally local, but the specialized work we sell all over the place in Canada and the U.S. because we do foil stamping and small die-cutting, apply glitter and things like that,” said Warner Ten Kate, owner of Accell Graphics. “The glitter application is something we do quite a bit. It’s a relatively small niche market, but we’re not a really huge printer compared to some in North America, so it allows us to do something different than a lot of people do, and it’s not really worth it for the big guys to get into it.”
Founded in 1985 as a quick print shop, Accell has since added full prepress services and four-colour printing as well as black & white digital printing and large-format printing on a 60” plotter. Prior to installing the new Komori Lithrone, Accell had reached capacity on its older presses—running three shifts, five days per week—and found itself farming out some four-colour work. Apart from the productivity of printing two sides at once, Ten Kate estimates that makeready time on the new Lithrone is about one quarter of what it was on older equipment. In addition, by using colour profile information and automated ink settings, the press comes up to colour in fewer than 100 sheets, which reduces waste and supports Accell’s commitment to the environment.
“I think it’s easier to do higher quality work now,” Ten Kate noted. “It’s a lot easier and a lot faster, which has made the market more competitive.”
Accell’s method of competing is to specialize, and to continually develop new and creative product offerings, like the glitter greeting cards and other projects now in testing. “Beside customers being creative and bringing you work to produce, I think you’ve also got to do it in reverse and bring new capabilities to customers that allow them to be more creative,” Ten Kate said. “I don’t think you can sit around anymore and rely on the same old business, because I don’t think it’s going to be there.”
Komori sheetfed offset presses are available in eastern Canada through M.D. International in Quebec, and in Ontario and western Canada from K-North, of Mississauga, Ontario.
More to offer
Montreal’s BL Litho has purchased an eight-colour 41” KBA Rapida 105 sheetfed perfector, which has given the company a broad range of print capabilities. The 50-year-old firm employs 70 people and produces a range of printed materials from business cards and publications to posters and gift boxes. BL Litho had been running an aging Mitsubishi press with no automation and sought to upgrade both its technology and its capabilities. The company tested presses from a couple of manufacturers, but the Rapida 105, installed about one year ago, was the only one to offer everything the company needed, including the option to add a UV coater.
“You can print on anything on the KBA up to 60-lb. stock,” said company director Martin Marchand. “I had my press configured four-over-four, with a UV hybrid printing option, so I can print 13,000 sheets per hour, perfecting, on 34-pt. board. I can touc
h all the aspects of commercial printing, and I can go from packaging to commercial to four-over-four with the same shop and with the same press. Makeready time is next to nothing—six minutes for eight plates perfecting, and under 100 sheets for positioning and commercial colour.
“I can work with densitometry or spectrophotometry on the press,” he added. “I have full quality control with the Logotronic Navigator on my press, in my office and in my home. It gives me real-time data on press. If I’m at home, I can just log into the press and see a report on the full week, day, or shift.”
Predictably, the move to such full automation required a learning curve, but BL Litho is no stranger to digital technology. The company has comprehensive digital prepress capabilities in-house and runs two Xerox iGen3 digital presses.
“We’ve have to take the time to learn how to walk and then run,” Marchand said. “We went from a little five-colour press with a Dahlgren waterbase to an eight-colour, 65’ press with UV and extension delivery. That was a big step up for us.”
The Rapida was delivered prepped for the UV coater, and Marchand said that the coater will likely be installed in coming months. The ability to UV coat is yet another marketable capability in highly competitive times. The versatility the KBA Rapida brings to BL Litho gives the company a broader range of capabilities to serve a more varied customer base, as well as to take on different types of work from the same customer.
“All those points means the stars were all aligned for me to invest in the KBA,” said Marchand. “KBA has their American facility only about two hours from my shop, they have a Toronto office, and now they’re opening in Quebec in association with KBR Graphics. They’re going to have an office here in Montreal for parts and service.”
Bigger and better
TI Group, based out of Toronto, also has been pursuing new markets to differentiate itself and to serve a broader customer base. The company includes TI Studios, which offers design, photography, prepress, and related services to sophisticated clients in the advertising and corporate markets. TI Group is now launching additional services, which require not only the same level of high-quality image reproduction, but larger-format offset printing capabilities.
“We’re looking at the short-run, basically the point-of-purchase display market or the plastics market,” said TI Group’s Dave Smith.
In this market, size counts, and after a two-year process of assessing their specific needs and the available models to accommodate those requirements, TI Group is currently installing a 73” MAN Roland XXL sheetfed offset press with a UV coater.
“There were only two different presses in this size range,” Smith said. “If you’re in the 40” market, you’ve got five machines that you can compare. In our market, it’s either one press or the other. Each has its own features and benefits, and at the end of the day, you’ve got to choose one.” The other press TI Group considered provided an 81” format, but the company opted for the 73” MAN Roland 900.
Though Smith was tight-lipped about what exactly TI Group is up to in its reach for new markets, except to say that it is not packaging, he did say the company has undergone considerable retooling as it moves to large-format offset printing.
“I never envisioned it to be such an undertaking to go from 40” to 73”,” he said. “It is a completely different business, and it touches everything from the way people think to the way we plan jobs. We’ve installed a new computer-to-plate device, new imposition software, the press, and new materials handling to handle skids of that size and weight. Our production manager is a new person. It’s a 100% new business. It’s an unbelievable project, more than I would have anticipated, and it’s not for the faint of heart.”
The new press is still in the installation process, but TI Group expects the MAN Roland 900 to be operational by mid-January, 2008.
The company also runs an eight-colour, 40” sheetfed offset press for its general commercial work, and is looking forward to the ongoing process of re-making TI Group with new capabilities.
More to come
Although sheetfed offset printing seems to have reached a plateau of high-tech automation, super-speed, and quality, we can guess at what may be next to come. The international DRUPA printing trade show is scheduled for spring of 2008, and no doubt all offset press manufacturers have enhancements under development. However, even with the technology at current levels, printers such as the ones profiled above are finding that the latest technologies are more than just marketing hype—they do expand the printer’s options, can open new markets, and can improve both operating efficiency and profits.
