COLOR COPIERS & DIGITAL PRESSES -- Coloring Between The Lines

The plate material is rated for 10,000 impressions and is designed for conventional—not waterless—offset printing. It can be imaged at up to a 2,400-dpi resolution using screen rulings of 150 or 175 lpi. All four plates are exposed simultaneously, with the exposed coating material removed by the action of the dampening solution.

KBA North America is now offering ORIS Works, from CGS Publishing Technologies International, as a digital front end to its 74 Karat digital offset press. The prepress workflow system supports all major file formats, including PDF/X, TIFF/IT, DCS, Scitex and others. Network-enabled hot folders receive and process files automatically, performing such tasks as preflight checking, format conversion, trapping and imposition.

Having previously straddled the all-digital and on-press market segments, MAN Roland announced it was removing the DICOpress and DICOpack digital printing systems from its product range and exiting the toner-based digital printing business. The company's digital systems business unit is now focusing solely on its digital offset press, the DICOweb.

Since the two toner-based systems were OEM products from Xeikon, the company acknowledged that "the difficult and unsure business footing of Xeikon this year (in 2003) was not an insignificant factor."

MAN Roland says it is looking to further advance its own fully digital offset printing press as a means to take advantage of the industry trend toward smaller production runs at increased quality, lower costs and improved performance.

While it wasn't prepared to make any specific announcements, Kodak Polychrome Graphics (KPG) says both its new Thermal Direct non-process plate material and thermal head technology are suitable for on-press imaging applications. Thermal Direct is said to produce no debris and support run lengths of at least up to 100,000 impressions. The company reports stressing miniaturization and modularity in its head technology, making the systems a good fit for on-press imaging.