Digital Printing To Dominate Mainstream Production

Technological advancements and increased market demand will lead to a predominance of digital printing production in most operations in the near future, according to Nipson America.

Technological advancements and increased market demand will lead to a predominance of digital printing production in most operations in the near future, according to Robert Stabler, president of Nipson America.

Nipson manufacturers mono digital printing presses and Stabler sees the wide-spread adoption of digital soon becoming a reality in mainstream print production.

At Graph Expo 2006 (stand 4259), Nipson demonstrated what it claimed to be the combination of speed, print quality, cost and flexibility that is contributing to the industry trend.

Stabler commented: "The convergence of market demand and technology developments is bringing us to a tipping point in digital adoption already.

Cost per page continues to fall due to productivity improvements of over 10 per cent per year, whilst print quality improves and demand for target printing increases.

At Nipson, we are at the leading edge of this change, connecting market demand with technological possibilities.

This is the result of continuous investment and enhancement in speed, print quality and total cost of ownership." Stabler explained that digital speeds and quality have been steadily improving but that there is always a critical point when technology moves beyond niche markets.

With digital mono production, the speed, quality and cost of consumables have all reached benchmarks that allow them to be adopted effectively in to most print operations.

In addition, market demand for targeted print runs in many different industries is driving the need.

It is the convergence of those two factors that makes the current stage of development in digital development different, he believes.

He commented that direct mail, transactional and book printing are all industries that are already seeing a level of convergence.

The change-over in technology of direct mail and transactional markets is primarily occurring because of speed and productivity increases.

With print, book-on-demand and speciality applications, the integration of digital technology in to traditional operations is taking place because of vast improvements in digital print quality, added Stabler.

For all of those markets, the cost is coming down and that is leading to greater adoption industry-wide.

Nipson said that it has users in those industries that employ the speed and flexibility of digital technology to integrate in to finishing, labeling and offset printing equipment.

Those same industries are also noticing increased demand for more targeted print runs.

Nipson believes that technology is based around magnetography and non-heat flash fusion.

The combination of technologies makes the company's systems particularly well-suited for integration with finishing equipment and traditional printing technologies, it is claimed.

And Stabler explained that Nipson's technology is able to sustain high speeds without degrading print quality, or affecting the flexibility or integration.

Because of that Nipson is well positioned to continue to serve the market since it expects the speed of its technology to continue to steadily increase, whilst other technologies plateau.

At Graph Expo 2006, Nipson's Varypress 400, ran at a claimed 125 metres per minute (415 feet per minute) as it produced a mix of technical manuals, direct mail, print on demand, transactional and speciality applications.

The systems were integrated with finishing equipment from EMT International to show the flexibility of Nipson's technology to effectively serve a wide range of markets, added the company.

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