Hybrid Webs: New Life for Conventional Offset?

Web printers serving mailing markets are looking for ways to use conventional offset yet deliver what clients want: customization and variable-data print.

Feeding offset preprinted rolls through digital print systems can present a registration nightmare as substrates stretch during reprinting. Two exhibitors—Nipson and Kodak—showed "dream" systems integrating the two capabilities. Kodak showed a Rotatek web press in which one tower was replaced with an M-Tower incorporating Versamark inkjet heads.

Kodak's Ron Bilboa says the approach preserves investment in existing conventional equipment, while adding digital printing—without slowing throughput. (At Drupa, Versamark technology was used in Muller Martini's Concepta web press.) The Kodak Versamark unit prints a 300×300-dpi image at press speeds up to 1,000 fpm. As many as 16 inkjet heads combine in any configuration on a web press to print one-, two- or three-color variable-data images and text. Bilboa says that this solution is far less expensive than over-printing offset shells. In fact, a full-color Versamark page costs less than $0.025 to print.

Nipson demonstrated a monochrome VaryPress 400 printing inline with a Muller Martini Concepta color offset press. Nipson uses magnetography to output 600 dpi at speeds up to 410 fpm. Its digital heads can be configured on other presses, too. A benefit from such configuration is elimination of additional winders/unwinders.

At the show, Fox Printing, Quakertown, PA, bought Domino's ON Demand inkjet print heads for in-line personalizing.