Development direction of sheet-fed offset printer: double-sided automatic printing (on)

In the past few decades, plain printing technology is a very important printing technology in the United States. Most prints in the United States today are still produced using the plain printing technology. According to estimates of the US Department of Commerce, the total value of commercial print produced in the United States is 74.8 billion U.S. dollars per year, of which the total value of printed matter produced using lithographic offset printing technology is 58.4 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 75%. At present, sheet-fed offset printer manufacturers are designing and manufacturing new types of equipment to meet various needs in the printing press market. Large-scale typographic printers have become popular products. An important feature of the new type of typographical machine is its increased level of automation and direct imaging capabilities. A significant development trend of the new type of typographic machine is the use of color management technology. When we entered the 21st century, the above trends indicated the direction for the development of sheet-fed offset presses.
Automated printing as a production standard Recently, a survey published by the American Association of Printing and Publishing Technology Providers, titled “The Present Situation and Future of the US Press Market,” showed that most customers who purchased a new type of printing press had automated printing jobs. The function is in a very important position. At present, various important printer manufacturers are working hard to improve the performance of the printing press and regard the automatic printing operation as the basic production standard to meet the needs of our customers. The latest presses have the following features: automatic alignment control, automatic adjustment of roller pressure and side gauges, automatic and semi-automatic plate loading, automatic cleaning of blanket cylinders and impression cylinders, and fully integrated color control panels. This will allow printers to reduce commissioning time to 10-20 minutes. Sheet-fed offset presses have a short setup time and can print 15,000 sheets per hour. Therefore, the productivity of this type of printing press is very high. An example of an innovative attempt at automatic printing press operations is the CPC 32 prepress interface device from Heidelberg. This device can automatically pre-adjust the ink key according to the data provided by the pre-press RIP. There is no need to scan the plate again.
In addition, Heidelberg’s CP 2000 color touch screen display (running under windows NT) can dynamically adjust the press (including changing the alignment position and ink supply) during high-speed printing production. CP 2000 can store 250 job production data in its standard memory for repetitive production of jobs. The degree of automation of small presses is also increasing. As monochrome copier type printers are being replaced by digital copy/printer machines, many printer manufacturers are striving to develop multi-color, highly automated, small-format printers. For example: According to Japan's Leung Ming company, the company's newly developed 3304 HA4-color A3 size press has only 6 minutes to prepare. This press has semi-automatic loading capabilities and is equipped with an offline computer-to-plate system that can produce plates. Another example is ABDick, which has long produced monochrome printers. The company has developed the Century 3500 2 printing units, A3 size presses with the characteristics of a large press. As with Leung Ming and ABDick, more small-press printer manufacturers will continue to increase the degree of automation of their products and increase the number of printing units.
The trend toward large-scale printing presses The manufacture of the single-sheet printing presses with the largest specifications ever has now made sheet-fed printers enter the traditional operating site of a web printer. This large format printer, which is primarily manufactured for the packaging industry in the printing industry, allows sheet-fed printers to achieve considerable economic benefits when producing large quantities of printed matter. The major printers with outstanding performance include the Rapida 162 8 printing units produced by KBA, 60-inch printing presses; the Speedmaster 102-10-p type 10 printing units produced by Heidelberg, 40-inch printing presses and Man Roland The company's 900-type 8 printing units, 56-inch printing presses. Each of the above printing machines is a double-sided printing machine that can perform double-sided color printing at a time. The Speedmaster 102-10-p type press produced by Heidelberg has an automatic print job function. The preparation time of the machine is very short, and double-sided printing can further save the production time. According to press manufacturers, these large sheetfed presses are currently selling well. Therefore, major printing press manufacturers may begin production of 8-10-color double-sided printing presses within the next one or two years.
Direct Imaging Presses Many printer manufacturers today are selling offset presses with direct imaging capabilities that allow direct imaging of the printing plate. OmniAdast introduced the 70SCDI first 4-joint direct-imaging press. The company is continuing to make technical improvements to the 70SCDI. Heidelberg has launched the Speedmaster DI 74 4-joint press after the DP-type dual-link presses, forming a complete range of fully automatic presses with direct printing capabilities. The plate imaging process can be performed directly on the roller of the Speedmaster DI 74 press, as well as the plate imaging process in the traditional way, which makes the workflow more flexible. Heidelberg also recently launched an improved product, the FastPay DI Plus, on the basis of Speedmaster DI. (To be continued)