Current situation and Prospect of the most popular

Current situation and Prospect of half web printing machine (Part 2)

competition in the sheet fed printing market with new technology when magnaprint company purchases Mitsubishi Diamond 8 straight grain half web printing machine, printing quality is its main consideration. When the company makes a decision to use a half web printing machine, it does not want to increase productivity as the price of obtaining second-class quality prints. For such a medium-sized printer who mainly prints catalogues, pamphlets, Yearbook reports, greeting cards and general commercial advertisements, the completion time of printing is a key consideration. When a half web printer is used, the printer can complete the printing, drying, folding and binding of the printed material in one day. As the market demands more and more real-time printing with variable quantity, printers have found that the half web printing market has more opportunities than the sheet fed printing market in the future growth. In order to overcome some long-standing problems in half web printing, experts began a grand plan five years ago - to develop a new half web printing machine required by the market. The key of this new half web printing machine is the use of servo technology. Each part of the new half web printing machine has its own drive motor and encoder, which can transmit more than one million information to Pentium processor per revolution. The servo device is driven without shaft, and each component can be controlled and driven independently, so it can be applied to almost any printing machine, from offset printing, embossing printing, flexographic printing to gravure printing and rotary wire printing devices. Its shrinkage is still large. The reason why traditional sheet fed printers oppose turning to web printing has always been that the substrate is difficult to achieve consistent coordination and control in printing. In the traditional web press, this difficulty comes from the distribution of torque in each mechanism of the press. Whenever the speed of the printing machine changes, the torque force at the front end of the driving device will be transmitted to all parts of the printing machine, causing chain changes, inaccurate overprint and other problems. Using servo technology, we can control every part of the printing machine very accurately, and solve the problem of interaction between a large number of parts. In order to make traditional sheet fed printers understand the advantages of half web printing machines, it can be vividly compared to a series of sheet fed printing machines whose printing units are arranged in a row, only changing the paper feeding mode from paper stack to paper roll for printing. Just because the space occupied is small, and the substrate is produced in roll form, printers can save about 15 ~ 20% of paper consumption. The servo device enables the half web printer to better complete online post press processing, such as die cutting, punching, coating and other processing. Direct mail market direct mail is a new product of modern industry. Statistics show that booklet printing is declining sharply, which is inconsistent with the prediction a few years ago. The reason is the emergence of direct mail. Personalized print is showing an amazing growth momentum. However, due to various reasons, most printing markets still tend to go offline for post press personalized processing. Therefore, the faster the printing is completed on the printing machine, the faster the next process will be transferred. Customers' personalized printing requirements are also reflected in the gradual decline in the number of prints and the increase in the number of printing colors, which requires high printing added value. These market characteristics make it more economical to use half web printers than large sheet fed printers or wide web printers. The printing quality and automation of half web printing machine can fully meet the requirements of printers, so it has been selected by many printers. Another main reason for choosing a half width or narrow width web printer is the number of pages. If it happens to be a 32 page book, full web printing is just right. As long as the printing volume can balance the processing cost, the printer can complete the post press processing offline. However, if the printing activity is a large number of short pages, 8 pages, 12 pages, 24 pages or 36 pages, it is more reasonable to choose a narrow web printer with good flexibility. A printer who has successfully used half web printing machine has now purchased the fourth Heidelberg half web printing machine, and believes that it is the most suitable printing machine to meet the company's printing target market. They believe from practice that the half web printing machine is particularly suitable for commercial printing and direct mail printing market, with a printing number of 50000 to 100000. In addition to providing better flexibility, the half web printer is also a durable and efficient printer. With the development of more colors and more personalization, the number of printing colors that can be completed by the half web printing machine is also an important factor affecting the web printing market, especially the half web printing machine used in the direct mail printing market. According to the information received from the printer manufacturer, a 12 color printer for direct mail printing was recently sold for the first time. In the past, the average color number of direct mail printing equipment was 6-color printing machine, but now it has been increased to 8-color printing machine, and many 10 color printing machines have been sold. Now there are more requirements for direct mail printing, such as UV glazing and more color number printing. Another important trend affecting the half web printing market is that direct mail and directory printing are required to be more localized and personalized. Generally, 80% of the contents in the product catalogue are the same, but there are also a large number of personalized parts. Applying the automatic function of narrow web printing machine to catalogue printing can reduce the cost. With the decrease of printing number and the increase of personalized and regional requirements, small format web printing machine is becoming a cost competitive printing machine. Another factor that shifts to the half web printing market is the prepress preparation time. Usually, there are many mechanical and manual tasks in the setting of sheet fed printing. Many printers turn to web printing because they can be loaded and unloaded quickly. Many years ago, due to the high degree of automation of the sheet fed printing machine, people generally took the sheet fed printing machine as the preferred model. However, in recent 5 ~ 7 years, due to the increasing automation of the web printing machine @10, after the cylinder is returned, the test piece is removed, and this test is completed, the web printing machine has become one of the main considerations for the selection of the printing machine. The use of computers and more perfect printing machine control technology have made full web printing as automated and competitive as half web printing. If you put a half roll maximum size gap cylinder printer side by side with a full web printer, there is no obvious difference in the time they need to complete the first print. So now many printers also turn to full web printing machines. At this time, the chromatic control, closed-loop color correction and other characteristics of the half web printing machine are no longer an advantage. Because the technology used in half web printing machine is almost the same as that used in full web printing machine, and it is also as expensive. Therefore, in terms of technology, half web printing machine and full web printing machine have the same advantages. Today's printing customers pay more attention to rapid prepress preparation and printing conversion, and servo technology is having a huge impact on the production capacity and efficiency of half web printing. A printing press with several million prints may have several different version requirements. The main feature of servo technology is that it is very conducive to rapid prepress preparation and printing conversion. Because each component has an independent drive, when one unit cleans the printing plate, another unit can be replacing the printing plate, which is unimaginable in traditional printing machines. Prospects for half web printing before the half web printing market may have amazing growth, we should have a clear understanding of the ability of open format web printing. When you look at the economic profit and loss balance point of a 40 inch wide sheet fed press and a half width web printer, the balance point of sheet fed double-sided printing is 10000 copies (compared with 15000 to 20000 copies a few years ago). Due to the characteristics of rapid prepress preparation and easy printing and live conversion of the split web printer, when the folding process is operated online, the balance point of the half web printer is about 7500 prints. The more on-line post press processing on the printing machine, the lower the number of prints reaching the surplus balance point. Experts believe that the half web printing machine market is a potential primary market that still needs to be vigorously developed. However, many sheet fed printers have not fully realized that the half web printer will be their excellent choice. Straight grain half 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 numbers of printing activities