In this short-run era, where a third of all jobs have run lengths of just 250 sheets, how are sheetfed offset presses faring? Industry observer Frank Romano offers his view.

By Frank Romano

At PRINT 1991, the direct imaging press was introduced to wide acclaim. Heidelberg captured the imagination of the industry with the world’s first automated press—the GTO-DI, codeveloped with Presstek. By 1995 the GTO had metamorphosed into the Quickmaster-DI, a re-designed and innovative four-color press that cut the time from submitted file to first sellable sheet to less than 15 minutes, with only a few sheets of waste. Within the same time frame, Komori and other press makers introduced automatic plate loading, followed within a few years by more and more press automation. By 2000, led by Heidelberg and others, CIP3 used the information that produced the plate to set up the press and the cutter.