Digital Printing and Direct Imaging (7)

● The speed is hundreds of pictures/minute;
● Low price.
The application fields of early digital printing were very narrow, mainly limited to product specifications, product samples, internal publications, legal texts, and direct mailings. However, today's situation has changed and the digital printing system has a very wide range of paper adaptation. The weight is generally between 60 and 300G/M2, that is, it can print from very thin paper all the way to paper jam. It has begun to be applied in all printing professional fields such as books, magazines, packaging, trademarks and cards, etc. Manufacturers have all launched digital printing systems for different applications and provide comprehensive system solutions. The overall performance of digital printing is also increasing, mainly in terms of output speed, quality and cost. The output speed (color) of early digital printing systems has been hovering at the level of tens of minutes per minute, but today it can already reach hundreds, or even more than a thousand, per minute. Although the quality of some digital printing systems is still not very high, but overall it has reached or approached mid-range offset, and it is still developing towards high quality. At the same time, there is also the possibility of further improving the quality of technology. Reports at the DRUPA`2000 Exposition have shown that the single-page price (color) of the electrophotographic system has dropped to 0.1 to 0.2 US$ (equivalent to 0.8 to 1.6 yuan), and may further reduce the price of single-page inkjet imaging systems. The drop to US$0.01 is equivalent to 8 cents to a fully acceptable level.
(7) Prospects for the future development of digital printing The characteristics and advantages of digital printing itself are not the entire contents of this technology. Actually, running it as an independent system does not play a unique role, but if the digital The combination of a printing system and a digital network is quite different. Once the digital printing system is integrated with the global digital network, it can build a global on-demand production and service system that is not constrained by time and distance, and can achieve full-scale on-demand services, that is, Produce and provide products, prints, packaging, cards, trademarks, and other products that customers need, where and when they need them. This is a global production service system. Provided it is covered by the network, it can provide on-demand services. In addition to providing on-demand services, this printing production system also has many unique advantages that cannot be achieved with traditional printing production systems, and is mainly embodied in the following aspects.
(1) Before meeting with customers (that is, before sales), all products exist in digital form and do not require the intervention of any intermediary physical media;
(2) This is a method of selling first and then producing, and the production is entirely in accordance with the needs of the customer. Therefore, it is impossible to see the product backlog or out-of-stock caused by the inaccurate estimation of market demand in the traditional printing production methods.
(3) The customer may designate and request products of any form and material, without incurring additional costs in addition to materials and printouts (except for fees related to copyright);
(4) The market position of digital printing is in the area of ​​personalized/on-demand, rather than the popular traditional market that depends on quantity to win.
In summary, the emergence and development of digital printing will open up new market opportunities, provide personalized/on-demand services that cannot be covered by traditional printing, and will not simply eat the market share of traditional printing as people think. Traditional printing competitors. (Finish)