Offset Printing - Sheet-Fed

What's all this about digital? To a lot of managers, offset is still the biggest wave of the future. by Mike Llewellyn IT SEEMS like all anyone can talk about lately is variable data printing. Equipment manufacturers, conference speakers and even in-plant managers have been loudly praising its virtues. But does that mean the sound of cranking offset presses is soon to fade into memory? Not if you ask Tom Neckvatal, manager of Minnesota Life Insurance Printing Services. His operation is proof that when the going gets tough, the tough run offset. The print runs streaming out of the 54-employee in-plant's offset press area

A strong focus on customers, along with expertise in process color printing and online ordering, have built University of Missouri-Columbia Printing Services into an in-plant powerhouse. by Bob Neubauer Not many in-plants can lay claim to a six-color press—let alone two of them. But when you're the largest printing operation in a city of 84,500, the big jobs have a way of finding you. With 105 full- and part-time employees, University of Missouri-Columbia Printing Services is not only a local printing giant, but one of the top in-plants in the country. It ranked 27th on the recent IPG Top 50, and boasted sales of

Only the biggest and busiest in-plants can support web presses. Most in-plants have found ways to incorporate the Web into their operations. But the other kind of web—the web press—remains a rare find in an in-house print shop. Only a few of the very largest in-plants have them. That's because it takes a lot of volume to keep a web press busy—and a lot of people to run one. Several in-plants on the IPG Top 50 have that volume and staff. Chief among them is the Government Printing Office, in Washington, D.C., which operates 10 web presses—eight Hantschos and two Harris models. The main

As the need for efficiency increases, sheetfed presses are getting smaller, faster and more automated. By MARK SMITH Just what is a "mid-size" press? Most would agree that 40˝ presses fit into the large-format press category, but defining a cutoff point for the mid-size designation has proved more elusive. "Most manufacturers have discontinued their 26˝-wide presses because the format was just a downsized version of a 28˝/29˝ press with a similar cost," says Mike Grego, marketing manager for Sakurai USA. "We are taking the opposite approach by introducing the compact, 466SIP 26˝ press that is a super-sized version of a 22˝ press. This

Digital presses are making in-roads into offset printing territory, but by no means is offset dying, according to offset vendors. by CAROLINE MILLER IT SEEMS as if all everyone is talking about lately is the rapid growth of the digital printing market. And as the output quality of digital presses comes closer to that of offset printing, some are even questioning the future viability of offset. Not Mike Grego, though. "Offset printing is alive and doing well," says Grego, marketing manager for Sakurai USA. "Digital direct-to-paper has taken a bite into the small-format, short-run work that was typically performed on duplicator presses. The majority

Small-format sheetfed presses now offer many of the features found on larger presses, such as increased speeds, automation and digital controls. by Caroline Miller There was a time when small-format sheetfed presses sat in the shadows. Workhorses, but nothing compared to their fast and flashy 40˝ brothers. Today, small presses are becoming the envy of the larger presses. The small press market has been the subject of intense technological development. As a result, small presses—ranging in size up to 20x29˝—now offer the features found on larger presses, such as increased speeds, makeready automation, networked systems and digital controls. This is great news for

Small-format sheetfed presses now boast many of the features previously only available on larger machines. As the saying goes, "good things come in small packages." This is especially true for small-format presses. They provide a quality product with fast turnaround time, while meeting the requirements of a tight budget. Take A.B.Dick's 9995A-ICS, for example. A line extension of its two-color 9995 offset press, the 9995A has a semi-automatic plate loading feature for metal and polyester plates. The Ink Control System (ICS) allows for automatic adjusting of the ink fountains. "The 9995A-ICS gives a printer the ability and automation to produce four-color process work

Offset may be the darling of today's printers, but it wasn't always. IPG has watched its progress for 50 years. HOW PRACTICAL is offset lithography for the in-plant shop? Twenty-five years after the defeat of letterpress, this question appeared in our March 1976 issue (then called Reproductions Review And Methods) in response to rising competition from the burgeoning copier industry. The answer then, and now, is the same: offset is very practical for in-plants. But this wasn't always so clear. For 50 years IPG has been covering offset lithography and bringing news of its advancements to our readers. The magazine owes

Are you routinely printing four-color jobs on a one- or two-color press? Find out how to produce even better quality work with fewer problems. Printing full four-color process on a single color press can be challenging, to say the least. But it can also be very rewarding to see the final result gradually come alive, one color after the other. For obvious cost, quality and productivity reasons, most four-color process printing is done on multi-colored presses in one pass. However, there are some advantages to printing full four-color process on a single-color press. For example, there is usually better ink

Often overlooked, specialty printing equipment can prove vital to your in-plant when a job requires its services. Digital copiers and wide-format ink-jet printers may get the lion's share of the headlines these days, but when you have special needs—like for envelopes or labels—it's the specialty printing equipment that you turn to. To help you sort through the available systems, IPG has assembled information on various models of envelope presses, tag and label presses, thermographic equipment and sheetfed press attachments. Envelope Presses For in-plants that need to print short and mid-volume runs of envelopes, Olympus America Digital & Imaging Group offers the PagePlex