The Present Situation and Prospect of Half-web Printing Press (Part Two)

When new technology competes with sheetfed printing market MagnaPrint purchases Mitsubishi Diamond 8 straight-web half web presses, print quality is a major consideration. When the company decided to use a half-web press, it did not want to increase productivity as a price for obtaining second-rate quality prints. For such a medium-sized printer based on print catalogs, pamphlets, yearbook reports, greeting cards, and general commercials, the time to print is a key consideration. With a web-width web press, printers can print, dry, fold and bind Indian prints in one day. As the market demands more and more variable amounts of instant printing, printers have found that the half-web printing market has more opportunities than the sheet-fed printing market in future growth. In order to overcome some of the long-standing problems in half-web printing, experts five years ago began working on an ambitious plan to develop new half-web presses for market demand. The key to this new half web press is servo technology. Each part of the new half web press has its own drive motor and encoder, which can transfer more than one million messages to the Pentium processor per revolution. The servo is shaftless and each component is self-controllable and autonomously driven, so it can be used on almost any printing press, from offset, letterpress, flexographic printing to gravure and rotary screen printing devices. The reason why traditional sheetfed printers oppose the printing of web offsets has always been the difficulty in achieving consistent and coordinated control of substrates in printing. In conventional web printing presses, this difficulty arises from changes in the distribution of the torques of the various mechanisms in the printing press. Whenever the printer speed changes, the torque force at the front end of the drive device will be transmitted to various parts of the printer, causing chain changes, resulting in misprints and other issues. With servo technology, we are able to control each part of the press very precisely and solve the problem of the interaction between a large number of parts. In order to make the traditional sheet-fed printer aware of the advantages of a half-width web press, it can be vividly compared to a series of printing units of a sheet-fed printing press, but changing the paper feeding method from paper to paper Paper rolls are printed. Because all substrates are produced in roll form, printers can save about 15 to 20% in paper consumption. The servo device enables the half-web press to perform on-line post-press processing such as die cutting, punching, coating, and other processing. Direct mailing Direct mailing is a new product of modern industry. Statistics show that booklet printing is falling drastically, and this is in contradiction with the predictions of a few years ago because of the emergence of direct mailing methods. Personalized print is showing an amazing growth momentum. However, due to a variety of reasons, most printing markets still prefer offline personalization after printing. So the faster the printing is done on the press, the faster it will go to the next process. The customer's personalized printing requirements are also reflected in the gradual decrease in the number of prints, the increase in the number of printing colors, requiring high value-added printing. These market features make it even more economical to use half-web presses than large sheet-fed or wide web presses. The printing quality and degree of automation of the half-web press fully meet the requirements of the printer, so it has been chosen by many printers. The other major reason for choosing a half or narrow web press is the number of pages. If it happens to be a 32-page book, it is appropriate to use full web printing. As long as the print can balance the processing costs, the printer can complete the post-press processing off-line. However, if IndoLife is a large number of short prints, 8 pages, 12 pages, 24 pages, or 36 pages, then it is more reasonable to choose to print on narrow web presses with good flexibility. A successful printer using a half web press has now purchased the fourth Heidelberg half web press and considers it to be the most suitable press for the company's printing target market. In practice, they believe that half-web presses are particularly suitable for commercial printing and direct mail printing, with prints ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 impressions. In addition to providing better flexibility, half web presses are also durable, high-efficiency presses. More Color, More Personalized Development The number of print colors that a half web press can accomplish is also an important factor affecting the web printing market, particularly the half web press for direct mailing to the printing market. . The information obtained from the printing press manufacturer recently sold for the first time a 12-color printing press for direct mail printing. In the past, the average color number of direct mail printing equipment was six-color printing presses, which have now been increased to eight-color printing presses, and many 10-color printing presses have been sold. Now there are more requirements for direct mail printing, such as UV coating and more color printing. Another important trend affecting the half-web printing market is that direct mailing and catalog printing are required to be more regionalized and personalized. 80% of the content in the general catalog may be the same, but there are also a large number of personalized parts. The use of the automated functions of a narrow web press for catalog printing can reduce costs. With the decrease in the number of prints and the increase in personalization and localization requirements, small format web presses are becoming cost-competitive presses. Advantages of prepress preparation Another factor that has shifted to the half web market is prepress time. Often sheetfed printing has a lot of mechanical and manual work in settings. Many printers are turning to web printing because they can get up and out quickly. Many years ago, due to the high degree of automation of sheet-fed printing presses, sheet-fed printing presses were generally the preferred model. However, nearly 5 to 7 years, due to the higher degree of automation of web printing presses, web printing presses have become one of the main considerations for the selection of printing presses. The use of computers and better press control techniques have enabled full-web printing to be as automated and more competitive as pre-press preparation for half-web printing. Suppose you side by side a half web press with a full web press. There is no obvious difference in the time they need to complete the first print. So now many printers have also turned their aim to full web presses. At this time, the color control, closed-loop color correction and other features of the half web press are no longer an advantage. Because the technology used on a half-web press is almost the same as a full-web press, and it's just as expensive. So technically, half web presses have the same advantages as full web presses. Today's printing customers pay more attention to rapid prepress preparation and print and live conversion, while servo technology is having a huge impact on the production capacity and efficiency of half web printing. A multi-million-dollar print job may have several different version requirements. The main feature of servo technology is that it is very conducive to rapid prepress preparation and print-and-live conversion. Because each component has an independent drive, when one crew cleans the plate, the other crew can be changing the plate, which is unthinkable in traditional presses. Prospects for half-web printing Before the phenomenal growth of the half-web printing market, there should be a clear understanding of the ability of open-web web printing. When you look at the balance of economic losses and benefits between a 40-inch web-fed sheet-fed press and a half-width web-fed press, the point of double-sided printing on a single sheet of paper is at 10,000 impressions (a few years ago 15,000 to 20,000 prints). Due to the characteristics of rapid prepress preparation and the off-web printing press, the balance point of the half web press is about 7500 impressions when the folding operation is online. The more on-line post-printing operations on the press, the lower the number of impressions that reach the balance point for the surplus. Experts believe that the half-web press market is a potential primary market that still needs to be vigorously explored. However, many sheet-fed printers have not fully realized that half web presses will be an excellent choice for them. Straight-web, half-width web printing can well meet the production needs of many sheet-fed printers. At the same time, it also provides them with the ability to print large print jobs.