Quick Printing

AUG 2013

Quick Printing is the only business resource serving the quick and small commercial printing niche in North America. Quick Printing is the authoritative source for business information, emerging technologies, shop profiles and management insight.

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INKJET WEB PRESS technology is opening new market opportunities for innovative print providers. "Car companies are using the magalog format to communicate with owners and leasees," Mansfield says. Content changes are based on demographic and sociographic information, such as age, geographic location, and interests. Outdoor enthusiasts use their sports utility vehicles differently than family minivans, he points out. Literally hundreds of millions of such pieces were produced last year by mega commercial/direct mail printer Japs-Olson in St. Louis Park, MN. The 106-year-old firm has played a major role in the evolution of on-press personalization, migrating from Kodak Versamark technology to its Prosper S series imprinting system in its 750,000-square-foot plant. The company had annual sales of more than $134 million in 2012, and increasingly more of the nearly one billion pieces it produces annually are highly customized. Its president, Michael Murphy, believes in the power of print, having studied at RIT under professor-turned-industry-guru Frank Romano. CEO Mike Beddor cited the example of a national retailer selling automotive parts. Every week, Japs-Olson prints, imprints, and mails two million to four million digest-sized (5.5x8.5-inch), case-bound, personalized mini-catalogs ranging between 12 and 20 pages each. Variable information includes recipient names, nearest store location, special offers, QR (quick response) codes, and even maps using geodemographic coding. "One store may be offering a car wash discount on page 13, while other stores want to promote different services on different pages," Beddor said. "In Minnesota in February, they may have had a surplus of windshield ice scrapers they are trying to sell." These weekly, custom print runs are accomplished on the Prosper S Imprinting System, which uses Kodak Stream Inkjet Technology and its Versamark CS410 System Controller to provide the highest quality in the inline digital printing product line. S10 imprinting speeds of up to 1,000 fpm match those of a web offset press and web finishing lines. (See separate article, "Fat Bottlenecks in the Digital Bindery," on page 23.) Four-inch print swaths "leave ample 'real-estate' space for multiple products, part numbers, and regionally based offers," Beddor says. Two dozen S10 print heads were installed in mid-2010, when Japs-Olson ColorStream 3000 Series Canon Solution America's Océ ColorStream 3000 series inkjet printing systems provide a modular ofering in various single and twin confgurations with four diferent printing speeds ranging from 48 to 127 meters per minute (m/min). The full color Océ ColorStream 3000 series system can also be set up as a monochrome-only system when needed. The entry level ColorStream 3200 allows customers that only require a print width of 17 inches and do not have print volumes to justify the investment in current inkjet oferings can start with a slower speed of 48 m/min (688 letter size images) and upgrade to the faster Océ ColorStream 3000 series speeds when required. The Océ ColorStream 3900 is the new top-speed model that ofers a process speed of 127 m/min. That translates to 909 letter sized images per minute (ipm) for a single unit or to 1,818 letter sized ipm in a twin confguration. Monthly volumes of up to 59 million letter sized images can be achieved. The Océ ColorStream 3900 features two production modes. For print jobs with short production windows and tight cost constraints, the performance mode of the Océ ColorStream 3900 operates at 127 m/min (417 fpm), at 600x480 dpi with multilevel dot modulation. For even higher quality requirements, the premium mode enables printing at 1200 dpi perceived image quality with 100 m/min (326 fpm) or 1,350 A4 (1,428 letter) ipm. MyPRINTResource.com/10711773 12 AUGUST 2013 ¥ INKJET'S AGE www.MyPRINTResource.com

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