Inkjet's Age, a print supplement to Quick Printing, is a business and technology brand dedicated to corporate and senior management and focusing on issues surrounding inkjet printing technology in all its forms. Inkjet's Age covers the industry news,
Issue link: https://quickprinting.epubxp.com/i/374926
www.MyPRINTResource.com SEPTEMBER 2014 • INKJET'S AGE 19 systems to fit within their current floor space requirements. The Cost Question Cost and space considerations are closely linked, Peterson said. Central to both is the speed-match issue. Your high- speed digital printer may operate faster or slower than your binding system. If that match is not optimal, you may need to slow down your printer to match the speed of the binding system, which may require adding another printer. But if your printer is not operating as fast as the binding equipment, you may be able to move the binding devices offline, and make do with fewer binding devices, re- sulting in economies. "With mismatched equipment, you may have more equipment than you need, which again leads to cost and space efficiency questions," Peterson said. Manieri said that while having good finishing equipment is beneficial, the right holistic approach to the workflow is even more important. The right finishing equipment will positively impact all other areas of production. That means that while upfront costs can be intimidating, the real concern of any PSP buying fin- ishing equipment should be the return on investment for a given solution. "A line with high initial cost may be able to automate an entire processing step, optimize production capacity, and boost the ROI of the printer upstream," he said. "Customers who want to get the most from their production should consult with finishing experts even at the time of purchasing press equipment." Dubuque argued total cost of owner- ship is critically important to any PSP considering an inkjet investment, and the complementary finishing equipment is an important part of that equation. "There are a wide variety of finishing solutions available, so make sure you compare apples to apples and try to measure real output," he advised. "Understand true labor costs with any solution, including set-up and change-over time, recovering time from jams and whether the prom- ise of inline can be efficiently realized. In some cases striving for inline adds significant capital expense in the pursuit of labor savings, but in reality there can be associated penalties, [such as] overall system downtime or performing some steps manually because the inline system is impractical or cumbersome." It's essential, he added, to very well un- derstand your work mix, both current and anticipated, because that will ultimately shape optimal system configuration. "If your finishing supplier offers a vari- ety of solutions, from paper handling be- fore and after the press to binding, fold- ing, and saddle-stitching, [that supplier] can be more impartial in guiding you through the selection process," he said. Coatings Consultation Epic Products International Corp. is one of the first companies worldwide to coat inline on an offset press, and inline on a digital sheetfed press. That has led the company to the development of coating inline for inkjet web presses, said Mike Barisonek, the company's vice president of sales and marketing. Inkjet webs were first designed to print only on uncoated stocks, mostly for black text book pages. "But the print quality and the paper quality has improved so that they can now print on coated stocks, and coated stocks have the ability to be post-print coated," he said. "Post-print coating for inkjet webs does the same thing as it does for all other printing, increasing scruff resistance." This makes inkjet web very close in quality and durability to offset print- ing and sheetfed digital printing, with applications for both UV and aqueous coating. Applications include direct mail adver- tising pieces and even commercial prints. "We're not the only ones doing this, but we're in the lead," Barisonek said. "We're partners with HP to provide the coating process inline with their T- Series printers. You have to look at print quality, speed, and versatility when shop- ping. For the first time, inkjet web with inline coating has the ability to allow you to take on new projects, but also move existing work from offset and sheetfed digital to one machine, increasing your efficiency." ✚ In Standard Hunkeler's Roll-to-Roll Solution with Web Inspection, pre-printed rolls can be routed through a variety of different near-line, roll-to-finish scenarios that can be mixed and matched as needed: dynamic per- forating and punching, offline cutting/stacking, fan-folding, direct-mail folding or signature-folding for perfect bound book work, or saddle-stitching.