Offset and Digital: A profitable marriage?

Many Canadian printers are now combining digital and traditional offset in their shops. And while this love affair will likely stand the test of time, it‘s the engagement period that might prove difficult.

Here it is in a nutshell: Traditional offset still rules, with about a 70% to 80% market share, depending on the shop and type of printing we’re talking about. But digital is closing the gap steadily. The heated manufacturer competition has spawned even more sophisticated digital machines offering many of the benefits of offset presses. As well, some innovative offset presses now boast good margins for short runs that would normally be done digitally. Manufacturers are also aggressively promoting some of their machines as complementing, rather than competing with, offset or digital.

In the final analysis, however, marrying offset and digital to improve your bottom line is very much a subjective choice based on your specific shop set-up, employee learning curve, budget, and current equipment.

For the trade printer, the digital era really began in full (and very speedy) colour in 1998 with the introduction of the HP Indigo E-Print 1000 6-colour and the Xeikon DCP/50D. Since then, the pace of digital innovation technology has been nothing short of phenomenal.

Last year, for example, Inca introduced the Onset, a revolutionary large-format UV digital flatbed printer that can handle print sizes up to 10.5’ x 5’ ft at speeds of up to 5,382 sq. ft./hr. The printer’s speed and quality is delivered by a massive array of 576 printheads comprising 73,728 inkjet nozzles. Holland & Crosby (Mississauga) and Artisan Complete (Markham) were the first and second companies in North America to install an Inca.

Depending on print-run size and workload, 5’ x 10’ posters ordered one day can be delivered the next. Because it’s digital, each sign can be customized. Plus, the Onset is much faster than current digital flatbed printers (4 to 6 times, depending on the type of job), so there are considerable cost efficiencies.

“We believe that a printer who can handle emergency orders almost overnight, with exceptional quality, the ability to customize, with extremely competitive pricing, has a tremendous advantage in the marketplace,” says Scott Crosby, Holland & Crosby, V.P. of Sales & Marketing.”

Artisan Complete says that the addition of the Onset complements its objective of implementing manufacturing principles, policies and equipment that are environmentally responsible through a reduction in the number of set-up sheets required, as well as using energy-efficient UV curable inks and technology.

So, here we have two leading printers with two separate visions, both looking to improve their bottom lines by adding digital.

Combining offset and digital in one job

Markham Ontario’s Bassett Direct has prospered by focusing on personalized direct mail. Its creations are mostly variable, done digitally on either a Xerox DocuColor 8000, Xerox iGen3, Xeikon 5000, or Xerox monochrome and 2-colour printers with MICR capabilities. However, in order to offer total service, the company needs offset presses in its equipment repertoire.

“In some cases, it makes sense to go conventional offset,” says President Rich Bassett. “For example, client campaigns can range from a few hundred to a few hundred thousand pieces. If the job has only static colour images, and if the quantities are large, we will print an offset template and digitally print the personalization in black. For Bassett, run length isn’t the only factor separating offset and digital. One project, for example, involved placing 2,500 variable images from a data file into the final mailing pieces. “You definitely couldn’t make that many plate changes using traditional offset.”

Bassett points out that digital presses are also ideal for applications where there are multiple forms, especially if the jobs involve timely information and quick turnaround. Having said that, he also has some clients that use offset exclusively. “Variable imaging is continuing to grow very rapidly, particularly in variable colour. However, there is a very large segment of the market that continues to utilize the traditional processes. Choosing the appropriate technology for the specific application is the key to successfully blending these technologies.”

Cober Printing of Kitchener, Ontario, founded in 1916, is a family run commercial business that employs about 70 people. The company has 2-colour and 4-colour 29” presses and 5-colour and 10-colour 40” presses. But it also has two Indigo presses—a 3050 (installed about 3 years ago) and a 5500 that they’ve had for less than a year. Digital has become a large part of their business and is currently their focus for the future.

“The combination of the two different presses has worked well for us,” says Todd Cober, Vice President of Sales. “In the beginning, we did mostly short-run static work but now it has grown. Today, a large percentage of our work is web-to-print of variable. We found quickly that we needed to acquire some new finishing equipment…Both press types work well together and we find ourselves printing many jobs where part of the job goes offset and part goes digital (e.g. English offset, French digital)…also…to be truly successful at it, we need to almost make digital its own business and workflow,” Cober adds.

Generally speaking, if a job is a short, static run, and he needs to make the decision between offset or digital, he finds that the transition point is 1000—1500 digital sheets. Above that number, it is more economical to go offset.

Finishing can have a lot to do with where the job runs also. Cober is running higher sheet counts on the digital side because it’s cheaper to finish. For example, if he has 150 copies of a 100-page book, he will run that digitally (almost 4000 sheets).

“We do this because it’s far cheaper to finish this on one pass in a booklet machine than it would be to do large setups on large folders and stitchers,” he says. “Another example would be a collated piece. Being as we can print in collated order, we will run larger sheet counts on the digital side to eliminate the need for collating in the finishing.”

As far as quality, Cober feels that the quality of digital for most applications is more than sufficient. “Generally speaking, the average person can’t tell the difference…where we find that digital is not at the same quality level as offset, is not in the quality of print, but in the range of substrates. With the large offset presses, you can run onion skin to thick cover and with digital you’re much more limited.”

His company’s growth in the digital market has been huge over the past three years. “We intend to keep growing our digital business with new ideas and technologies,” he says. “It’s exciting from a printing perspective in digital because we’re not just putting ink on paper, we’re actually adding value to that paper! We’re selling a product or a solution, not just print. We’re selling a way for our clients to make more money with their current marketing budgets. It’s exciting to be able to go to a client with new ideas that have nothing to do with how a piece looks, but more how it functions as a profit creator,” he adds.

HP’s 7000 competes with offset

“The growth of digital has been exceptional and digital machines are now challenging traditional offset in terms of economics,” says Danny Ionescu, VP, Graphic Arts, HP Canada. “We have quite a few customers now who have both technologies, but are starting to see an increased migration of offset users to digital.”

HP’s newest Indigo, the 7000, competes with offset in many categories.

“Our Indigo 7000 was designed from the ground up to compete with offset in…speed and ease of workflow,” says Ionescu, also noting that HP has invested significantly in its print servers in the past 18 months in order to help customers manage data.

“One of the biggest problems in incorporating digital with offset is a production bottleneck in the amount of data that needs to be processed,” he says. “Our line of Smart production servers allows us to go into a client’s shop and give them a personalized, ‘scaleable’ server based on their individual needs and internal set-up that allows for future growth.

The 7000 contains many innovations, such as ink cans that are triple the size of previous models; you can change print cans on the fly without interrupting the run. Recycling costs are reduced because the machine uses 50% less imaging oil. There’s also lower electricity consumption per printed page, the ability to print on recycled paper, and the elimination of make-ready waste (as compared to conventional offset printing) and, of course, the ability to print the precise quantity required. But what positions this machine with conventional offset is when it comes to run problems and its high-production support.

“To maintain production efficiency, if a run problem occurs, the machine will perform a self-diagnosis and pinpoint the trouble area,” says Ionescu. “We’ve even put in place a webcam at the press operator’s site so he can view the problem area immediately. If the problem persists, the press itself will automatically place a phone call to the HP Indigo Support Line—and send all relevant data to the attending HP technician about the press, so the operator doesn’t have to waste valuable time. The operator can, if requested, let the technician view the trouble area via a mobile webcam.”

One of HP’s customers, Eastwood Printing Inc. of Kitchener, Ontario, has been in the commercial printing business for 27 years. The company recently moved into digital by installing a press from the HP Indigo lineup to work alongside its offset Komori and AB Dick machines. “The HP Indigo 5000 has given us much more flexibility,”says owner Rick Devries. “We can now serve any client requesting virtually any type of printing job. The short-run digital really complements the offset jobs we produce on the Komori. We now have variable printing options for mailing campaigns, versioning for manuals, and so on. It’s really opened up many more markets for us.”

Canon’s imagePRESS compliments offset

Canon takes a similar approach, saying its flagship digital model is the perfect complement (rather than competitor) to offset. Canon complements offset with its imagePRESS C7000VP. As the flagship model in its imagePRESS family, this digital press will simplify operations, maintain print speed, ensure outstanding image quality and produce results comparable to offset printing, says the company.

It is capable of printing true image resolutions of 1,200 x 1,200 dpi at a speed of 70 pages-per-minute on letter-sized paper. It can also handle a wide range of paper sizes and weights – up to 13” x 19.2” and 110 lb. covers.

The press uses an oil-free V (vivid) toner consisting of tiny particles containing micro-dispersed wax that applies evenly and lays flat, resulting in sharp images with the look and feel of offset, says Canon. It has an input/output paper configuration of 10,000 sheets.

“The imagePRESS C7000VP was developed with three key ideals in mind: image quality, productivity and media handling,” says Mason Olds, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Imaging Systems Group, Canon Canada, Inc.

The press offers a wide range of features and capabilities ideal for three market segments: commercial printers looking to expand their services, quick printers who want to increase production volume, and in-plant facilities that need to maintain control over colour printing costs, quality and turnaround time.

MANRoland offers a changeover

Offset printing giant MAN Roland has what it calls a digital “changeover” machine in the form of its DICOweb that offers offset printing without the plates. It’s a high-end web offset press designed to produce high-quality print in short runs with fast job turnaround times. It‘s also capable of speeding from job-to-job in less than ten minutes and only two of those minutes are required for imaging the press.

An exclusive manroland design utilizes laser imaging heads and a patented thermoplastic transfer medium to apply the job directly to the DICOweb’s image-carrying cylinders. Then, when the print run is completed, the image is automatically erased to ready the cylinders for the next project. This unique ability to image, erase and re-image jobs results in significant productivity gains, not to mention its 30,000 impression per hour run rate.

As I said earlier, this machine is really more of a digital changeover device than a press, since it actually earns money through efficient changeovers. Its advanced mechanical features improve printing performance. With a seamless cylinder, you’ve eliminated vibration—one of the main enemies of speed and print quality. The machine’s modular nature also means that, in the future, shops will be able to switch to different cutoff sizes and even different print processes to better accommodate their customers’ needs.

Manroland researchers are already studying the development of ferroelectric image carrying cylinders that incorporate the principle of U-memory ceramics. That would give users the ability to swap-out variable data elements within an image on the fly, while retaining the main fixed elements of the job. The advancement would cut down on the time and expense of re-RIPping entire pages to produce one-to-one and variable data products.

Profitable short runs on a Heidelberg

Offset leader Heidelberg has introduced an innovative alternative to digital—offset printing based on its new Anicolor technology that enables even short runs to be produced cost-efficiently.

The main argument for using digital has always been the fast and cost-effective production it offered for short runs. Offset, until now, has only made economic sense for longer runs. But the company’s new Speedmaster SM 52-4 short-inking press with Anicolour technology is changing all that, making much shorter runs cost-efficient.

For example, runs as short as 250 sheets can be printed economically because of its short make-ready times, the option of using conventional printing plates, and the small amount of paper waste generated.

Compared to conventional offset printing, a press with Anicolor technology generates up to 90% less paper waste, plus, an average of just 20 sheets are required for inking up. In fact, with a typical job mix, the Speedmaster prints more cost-efficiently than a high-end digital press from as little as 250 sheets, says the company—assuming a single-shift operation, 5-day week and a typical mix of run lengths. Also, because the press’s inking unit doesn’t have any ink zones, it can be set up in less than 7 minutes.

Thanks to minimal make-ready times, the machine is ideal for web-to-print applications. It enables the time and cost benefits of online ordering and automated job processing to be matched or even increased. For instance, invitations and business cards in runs of just a few hundred sheets are just as straightforward as typical 4-color commercial work in longer runs, such as brochures or flyers.

Komori joins the speed race

Speaking of offset getting more sophisticated, Komori introduced its Lithrone SX40 at drupa 2008 with a host of upgrades designed to further improve print quality and job cycle times. Again, speed is the key.

For example, the press has a new maximum running speed of 18,000 sph. New higher speed and fully automatic plate change with non-stop plate removal, helps increase the speed for job-to-job changeovers.

The press can change 6 plates in approximately two minutes, enabling, along with KHS-AI, a 35% reduction in job-to-job-changeover time. From the end of production on one job to an ‘OK sheet’ for the next, you’re looking at just over 6 minutes.

Workflows to match

The multiple workflows required to mix offset and digital can lead to bottlenecks and errors in prepress and file preparation, so it’s crucial to understand and adopt a workflow that ensures smooth, efficient, error-free production. Kodak and Xerox, for example, have developed workflows that are easily integrated.

Kodak’s Unified Workflow enables an offset printer to grow into digital print, including variable data, all within one workflow. FreeFlow from Xerox combines a number of integrated, automated, and modular workflow solutions and, it can also be added to existing offset workflows such as Kodak Prinergy and Heidelberg Prinect without changing existing production processes.

What does the future hold?

In the May issue of Graphic Arts Magazine, columnist and wide-format printing specialist Peter Dulis revealed that, next year in North America, approximately 53 trillion documents will be printed. Despite the fact that only 9% will be digital, the numbers continue to rise—faster than traditional offset. According to one North American study done by InfoTrends, the industry should expect 91% growth in full digital transpromotional output from 2006 to 2009—from 1.62 billion images to 21.72 billion.

Concurrent with digital’s dynamism, offset machines are also climbing on the sophistication ladder, and now have features that make web-to-print, variable printing, and short runs just as profitable as if they were done digitally. Other offset machines have been designed to blend seamlessly into shops using both technologies. So where will it all end?

Well, perhaps at some future point, when many of us reading this have gone to that big bindery in the sky, sophisticated printing machines will incorporate both technologies from their inception, bringing further cost advantages to the industry.