Neither Down Nor Out

Despite the push for color, the future for black-and-white printing looks bright, especially as variable data applications grow.

by Caroline Miller

A WALK through any print trade show in the past year might leave you feeling that black-and-white printing is a thing of the past. Giant banners have been proclaiming the power of color printing.

But actions speak louder than words.

"There is an old phrase in marketing that says what you talk about and what you sell are often two different things," notes Mike Murphy, manager of marketing for DocuTech printing at Xerox.

It's a sentiment that Kevin Kern, Konica's vice president of production development and support, agrees with.

"Color is a new area; a lot of people are looking at its potential," he says. "Maybe, someday, everything will be in color. But for the foreseeable future, color is still going to be a lot more expensive than black and white."

That prohibitive cost is what is keeping black and white in business.

"We thought that when we started looking at the digital side of business for Heidelberg that color would be the only thing," notes Bill Blair, senior vice president of Digital Heidelberg North America. "But, as we started to put the NexPress in, people who didn't have black-and-white capabilities were going back and purchasing those capabilities because there is still a need for both.

"Sure, there will be some migration from black and white to color, and it is hard to say how fast that will happen," he continues. "Color sells, we know that. Clearly, the huge growth is in color as it becomes more affordable."

It may take some time for that to happen, though, states Guy Broodhust, director of product marketing for Océ USA. What is often forgotten is that the price of color printing isn't just limited to the cost per page.

"People forget that a color workflow is much more complicated; the files are much larger," he says. "So with color files you need better RIPs to pose them and to get them out to the printer, so you need a lot more horsepower, and the cost of color begins to climb by five or six times over black and white."

Hybrid Printing: Best Of Both Worlds

There is one area where the marriage of black and white and color makes enormous sense, though, and that is in the hybrid print arena, explains Murphy, of Xerox. With a hybrid approach, in-plants are able to get the speed, affordability and finishing of black-and-white production printing while only paying for the color pages they need.

And with the demand for more complex jobs has come the demand for more intricate finishing options.

"Just two years ago, only 11 percent of our printers went out with any finishing capabilities beyond stapling and tape-binding," reports Murphy "Today we have 32 percent penetration."

Konica is also seeing a move toward offline finishing, notes Kern.

"We are seeing more sophistication in finishing, and more and more people are going offline to spiral binding," he says. "We are seeing a reverse trend away from tape-binding in favor of higher-end-looking binding."

Variable Data A Big Factor

Also, variable data printing continues to be a huge issue in black-and-white production printers, especially for in-plants, notes Kern.

"We see customers merging traditional in-plant and data center functions," he says. "They are finding that transactional printing can be done easily in the in-plant, and other historically data center print functions, such as report printing, can be done by the work group."

Kern predicts that production printer speed and quality will continue to improve, as will the system architecture that enables in-plant managers to route jobs to different printers.

"We are going to see a lot more of PDF," he believes. "It is not expensive, it's an open architecture and there are now a lot of PDF tools that are on the market."

For Heidelberg, the emphasis remains on better finishing solutions in the short term.

"Black-and-white customers are looking for as much inline finishing as they can get. We are putting R&D into additional online finishing solutions," says Blair. "In the long term, I think we will see newer front-end solutions as it relates to variable data, and perhaps even larger sheet sizes."

On The Product Front

Graphic arts vendors have plenty of products available to meet the need for black-and-white production printing. The Xerox DocuPrint 90, for example, boasts print speeds up to 90 pages-per-minute (ppm) and resolutions of 600 dots per inch (dpi). It meets the needs of space-constrained in-plants looking for affordable ways to capture additional pages from print-on-demand applications. The DocuPrint 90 is designed to include Xerox's Signature Booklet Maker, a finishing option that produces up to 11x17˝ brochures with duplex printing, folding, stapling and trimming capabilities.

For the first time Sharp has a new 80-ppm digital multifunction machine. Called the AR-800 Digital IMAGER, it generates quality documents at 600x2,400 dpi, with monthly volume capability of 440,000 copies. The AR-800 is equipped with a 32 MB copier memory and 3.2 GB hard drive, plus 120 access codes and confidential/secure (PIN) printing capability. An embedded print controller comes as an option.

The new VersaMark Vantage from Scitex Digital Printing offers high-volume production capacity for black-and-white, spot or process color. The Vantage can produce more than 700 black duplex ppm for less than a penny per image. Users can upgrade to spot or process color by adding more print heads. The Vantage can be integrated into virtually any workflow environment, including AFP.

Océ Printing Systems USA offers a high-speed digital web printer, the DemandStream 8090cx. It offers simplex or duplex output. Combined with finishing choices, the DemandStream 8090cx enables a continuous, high-speed workflow for greater throughput, higher productivity and lower cost per piece. The system runs 600-dpi data streams at 243 feet per minute. The choice of either text-quality or graphics-quality (600 dpi) output lets in-plants decide which consumables to use based on job requirements.

With its high duty cycle, 600-dpi print quality, 18-1⁄2˝ print width, low total cost of operation and unique magnetography technology, the Nipson 8000 is one fast black-and-white digital printing press. Printing at speeds of 512 ppm (jumping to more than 1,000 ppm in a Twin Engine Duplex system configuration), the Nipson 8000 prints on a range of substrates, including lightweight and heavyweight paper grades (17 lb. bond to 110 lb. cover), synthetics, foils, self-adhesive labels, peel-off membership cards and tipped-on cards.

The Konica 7085 Production Printing System is suited for long runs. Its 85-ppm speed offers a maximum monthly duty cycle of up to 750,000 impressions. New features include solid metal universal paper drawers, 100-sheet stapling, direct scan-to-e-mail and Simitri polymerized tone. It also boasts 128 MB standard memory and robust connectivity with the IP-601 print controller.

The Infoprint 2105 is IBM's new mid-range cut-sheet printer. Outputting 105 ppm, it is easy to install, configure and manage, and comes integrated with copying capabilities. Its touch screen offers a range of printing and copying features. With an integrated scanner and automatic document feeder, the Infoprint 2105 offers users "scan once/print many" capabilities.

The Digimaster 9110 Network Imaging System from Heidelberg is a high-volume, low maintenance black-and-white printer. It supports all popular file formats. The Digimaster 9110 imaging process uses dry toner mixed with Small Particle Developer and a constantly revolving film loop, which takes the place of an offset plate. Since only the image area is exposed, unlike analog-based technology, exceptional pixel and line quality result. The system self-calibrates at start up and every six hours.

The CR Series 1300, from Delphax, is a continuous-feed digital printer delivering one-pass duplex printing at 1,300+ pages per minute at 600 dpi. The 1300 incorporates Electron Beam Imaging (EBI) technology, giving it the flexibility and speed for short-run and variable-data applications. The 1300 is suited for publishing and transaction document applications. It can utilize a variety of finishing solutions.

The Canon USA imageRUNNER 85 is an 85-ppm printer with document throughput and finishing capabilities. The print engine can support monthly volumes up to 400,000 impressions. The imageRUNNER 85 offers several document finishing options that include standard single and multi-position stapling up to 100 sheets. An optional 3,500-sheet paper deck brings total on-line capacity to 7,650 sheets.