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A Digital Press is not a printing press
April 27, 2008
The per-click charges and expense of consumables (toner, primarily) for the various digital presses make these machines costly devices when compared to the output of regular sheet-fed printing machines. But, you’re quick to point out that they are not regular offset presses. I agree, and I want to emphasize that point.
Too many printers buy a digital press and then treat it as a commodity printing machine. They talk at conferences about how to estimate for digital printing as if it were just another machine in a line of presses. How much to charge per sheet, what is the cost of toner and paper; what is the cost of maintenance? While all of those are important, digital printing is not cost-competitive with conventional printing! It’s better.
I have seen a handful of half-million-dollar digital presses sitting idle on the floors of plants around the world, victims of being treated as commodity printing machines. That’s a shame. My favorite example was a local company that bought an Agfa Chromapress (Xeikon). I was excited because it meant that there was a local digital press which could be used to print on-demand work for various of my projects.
I walked in the door one day with a job. They accepted the CD, and asked me to return in 24 hours to see a proof. I asked if they could just run the job (I had run an ink-jet proof in my own office; I knew what the job looked like). No, they couldn’t. Could I sign a waiver? No. I had to come back in 24 hours. So I asked if, when I returned in 24 hours, they could then immediately run the 25 copies I needed, they said, No, we can’t do that. It takes up to 48 hours to run the rest.
I’m no newbie, walking into a printing plant for the first time. I had enrolled in a week-long training course in the Chicago suburbs on the Xeikon press, and I certainly knew what it was capable to doing. I suggested that they call me when they were ready to make the proof, and I would do a press-side approval, followed by them running the other 24 sheets. Nope. Can’t do that.
So, I walked out, despondent about the fact that I would be waiting three-plus days for a job that could be run in 25 minutes.
The job came out fine, and I liked the results. But, I couldn’t understand the need for 72 hours of waiting time for a print-on-demand device. It was explained to me that it was the company’s policy to run the Chromapress press this way. It was the same policy they applied to sheet-fed printing where they generated film, made plates and an off-line proof, put the job in a queue, and then printed it. It reminded me of those ads: “We make no wine before its time.”
Not many months later I visited the same plant, and the Chromapress was sitting idle, unused and unloved. It didn’t work out, I was told. Imagine that!
If, instead of treating the Chromapress like another printing press, the company had created a print-on-demand attitude for that machine, this story might have had a happier ending. Digital presses are for one-off, variable-data, and very short run printing. They are also for printing commercial-grade printing for customers who are willing to pay a premium price for printing with unusual deadlines. A friend of mine who owns a printing plant in Berkeley, California, once said to me that much digital printing is for customers who don’t plan.
Planning or not, it’s up to the owner of the digital press to make a success of the technology. The best thing to do is to treat the digital press like a specialty process with a premium price. If the customer wants what the machine does best – they will pay a higher price for that valuable product.
Posted by Brian Lawler on April 27, 2008 | Comments (2)
