The digital printing press has four color images that are generated by toners that sit on top of the page rather than offset inks that are absorbed by the paper and which require plates, inks, and highly trained personnel. Rather than a crew of three, the digital press is operated by one person who can print as few as 100 pages at the same price per page as for 5,000 pages. Once creating a PDF was made easy and cost efficient, then the ability to capture and transfer images via the internet changed the entire work flow between client and printer. A "make-ready" that takes hours on an offset press has been reduced to minutes on the digital press. However, once a multiple-page order exceeds several thousand copies, the digital press must give way to an offset sheet fed or web fed press. A typical digital press will deliver between 4,000-6,000 pages of an 8” x 11” page per hour. A new digital press costs approximately $400,000 vs. $4,000,000 for the new sheet fed press. The iGen from Xerox, the Xeikon press, Indigo from HP, the NexPress from Kodak, and DI from Presstek are a few of the market leaders in this technology.

Contributed By:

Terry Tevis
President
TATevis & Company