Margie Dana

Printing Basics a la Frank Romano

Ten minutes after Frank Romano delivered his "Everything You Must Know about Digital Printing" session at our recent conference, a printer reached out and grabbed me by the wrist to stop me in my tracks as I was walking by.

"That was worth the price of admission!" he said emphatically. Others echoed his statement. If you haven't heard Frank deliver a presentation, add it to your list of New Year's Resolutions for '08.

Frank's session on digital was outstanding, as were his six modules in our first-ever Print Buyer Boot Camp, which we
co-presented on November 6th.

I listened to Frank with the ears of a new print customer. Here are some basic bits of print intelligence he delivered. I find them incredibly valuable for new buyers in particular:

Sheetfed Offset Printing
This is the most popular kind of commercial printing. There's also web offset, but sheetfed gives you more options when it comes to paper.

Sheetfed presses are categorized by sheet size:

• Offset duplicators use 11 x 17" or under

• Small offset takes 14 x 20" sheets

• A 4-up offset takes 19 x 29" sheets

• A 40-inch offset takes 22 x 40" sheets

• A VLF (very large format) offset can take 60, 72, and 80"+ sheets

There are variations on all of these sizes.

Count the Units
The number of colors a press can print is based on the number of print units it has. Presses typically have 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 or more units. If you're considering a printing company that has 2-color presses, but you need 4C work done, know that they cannot print your work in one pass; they have to run your job through their press twice.

If you need a brand or spot color and also need photos printed, a press with 5 units or more is most efficient. Newer presses have a special integrated coating unit in addition to the printing units.

Make-ready
Make-ready refers to the setup time for a press and is the key to everything, said Frank. Newer presses have reduced make-ready time to a mere 20 minutes. Digital presses can beat that: there is NO make-ready.

By the way, Frank says that print-on-demand means a printer's machines are "ready, willing, and idle."

Duplexing is synonymous with perfecting. These terms mean that a press prints both sides of the paper in one pass through the press.

Web Offset Printing
This printing process uses paper that comes not on sheets but on rolls or webs. There are half web presses (using paper measuring 20" or less) and full web presses (20" or greater). Full webs are either coldset or heatset. Heatset webs have dryers built into the presses.

In addition to web offset presses, there are web presses used for these printing processes:

Flexography - mostly used for flexible packaging.

Gravure - used for magazines, catalogs and some directories, as well as wallpaper, wrapping paper and some flexible packaging.

Digital Printing
Digital printing refers to "any process that re-generates the image for each page impression." It can use toner or inkjet. It is used for short runs (quantities of 1 - 5000, in general) and is also the only process that can print variable (personalized) information.

Digital is the fastest-growing printing process out there.

With one exception, digital presses can only print in CMYK. The HP Indigo is the only one that can do spot colors. In fact, it can be configured to do up to three spot colors.

Sheet sizes for the digital presses have been increasing in recent years. Right now, most new sheetfed digital presses take a 13 x 19" sheet. (This is not the same as the image area; check with your printer.) The Xerox iGen3 takes the largest sheet size: 14 x 22".

The Xeikon is a digital webfed printer 20” wide by almost any length.

This is just a sampling of education that I gained from Frank Romano's presentations at our 2nd Annual Print Buyers Conference.

Frankly (ouch), this information is as valuable to new sales and service reps as it is to new print buyers. Please feel free to share this Print Tip with them.

Thanks, Frank.

©2007 Margie Dana. All rights reserved. You're free to forward this email to friends and colleagues: please do! However, no part of this column may be reprinted without permission from the author.

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