Digital Printing-Toner - Cut Sheet (Color)

Today's digital, high-speed, black-and-white copiers provide advanced capabilities at a fraction of the cost of previous analog workhorse models. by JEFF SMITH The line between office and production equipment continues to become less and less distinct. "Distribute-then-print" has effectively replaced "print-then-distribute" for most applications in most environments. One of the primary causes of this shift in print distribution is the coming of age of digital office copiers, which, along with faster network printers, have provided an effective means to print electronically distributed documents. Today's digital, high-speed, office and production copiers are providing advanced capabilities to in-plants at a fraction of the cost of

In part two of our PDF feature, learn about some of the hurdles you'll have to leap to implement a PDF workflow in both the offset and toner-based environments. (See part one here.) by Heath Cajandig LAST MONTH, I discussed the history of the Portable Document Format (PDF) and the challenges it was created to overcome. But in the real world, can PDF files make things faster, easier and more efficient? First of all, let's talk about PDF in the offset environment. The promise of the PDF is that it can be created by a customer and then RIPed and printed by the

In the first of two articles on PDF, we'll trace the path of PDF from its beginnings as a format for the paperless office to where it is today. (See part II here.) IF PDF documents have not affected your in-plant already, they will soon. Consequently, the future of your shop may depend on how much you learn about the Portable Document Format. To help you, IPG is presenting a two-part article on PDF, detailing its history and application in both the ink-based and digital/toner environments. Since PDF is a variation of PostScript, it's helpful to take a look back at the origins

Xerox recently invited IPG to its Rochester headquarters to show off a host of new color and black-and-white products. by Bob Neubauer What's 30 feet long, 6-1/2 feet tall and very fast? The future, according to Xerox—or more specifically: the iGen3 Digital Production Press (formerly called FutureColor), the latest high-speed digital color printer from The Document Company. Xerox recently gave IPG a preview of some of the color and black-and-white technologies it will soon debut. Among them was the much-touted iGen3, first shown at Drupa last year. Outputting an impressive 100 pages per minute (ppm), at an expected cost of 5¢ per page,

NexPress is ready to battle for business in the digital color printing arena with its NexPress 2100. by Mark Smith Rochester, N.Y., might seem an unlikely place to be ground zero in the next big battle for dominance of the digital color printing market. That is, until one takes into account the city is the corporate hometown of NexPress Solutions LLC (a Heidelberg/Kodak joint venture) and Xerox Corp. Print 01 brought a temporary shift in the battlefield to Chicago, setting up a head-to-head bid for attention between the NexPress 2100 and Xerox iGen3 (formerly FutureColor) digital presses. (For its part, Xerox contends that

Some copier vendors see a strong future for black-and-white copier/printers as part of a cluster printing system. T/R Systems pioneered this model, but others are now touting their own cluster solutions. Minolta's MicroPress can support up to 12 output engines that can be a combination of black-and-white and color engines. The Unified Konica Solution also links to both black-and-white and color engines, with the server routing pages to the appropriate devices. "This creates a tremendous boost in efficiency, because operators can run several jobs simultaneously, instead of completing one job before starting the next," says Kevin Kern, of Konica. "The result is much faster

With digital technology growing, will there still be a demand for analog black-and-white copiers in the future? It depends on whom you ask. • Dennis Amorosano, Canon: "Surprisingly, there is a demand for analog machines. Much of the demand is due to price. The cost of analog is significantly less. A lot of customers don't have applications that justify digital, Internet-capable machines. For black-and-white copying only, you don't need to buy into digital. Analog will be around for all of these reasons, but mainly the due to the price." • Steve Pearl, Minolta: "There's still a demand for analog black-and-white because some businesses need

With color copier technology improving daily, what's in store for black-and-white? by Cheryl A. Adams Duplicating speeds and paper capacity were the specs by which black-and-white copiers were evaluated in the past. Today, customers want scanning, Internet connectivity and e-mail capabilities—not to mention mega speed. And, they want color. In a world where color has become a phenomenal communications tool, what is the future of black-and-white copiers? Surprisingly, it will be color that has to compete, according to several leading printer/copier manufacturers, including Canon, Konica and Minolta. These experts—which sell both color and black-and-white devices—feel the future of black-and-white looks quite

by Bob Neubauer As anyone with a printer or copier knows, equipment breaks down. So what's an in-plant to do if its DocuTech or 9110 goes down in the middle of a busy week? That's what Hal Cypert asked himself. "If you've got a fast-paced environment, sometimes you can't afford to be down for two or three hours, or overnight, if you're waiting on a part," notes Cypert, duplicating services supervisor for the County of Tulare, in Visalia, Calif. That's the main reason his 15-employee shop installed a T/R Systems Micropress instead of a DocuTech. "We did look seriously at the DocuTech," he admits.

Xerox has a lead with its DocuTech, but other vendors are successfully challenging it. In-plant users have strong opinions on the available machines. by Allan Martin Kemler Xerox has ruled the high-speed black-and-white digital printing world since it launched its DocuTech in 1990. So when Heidelberg, a giant in its own right, decided to step into the fray, everyone wanted to see what would happen next. What happened was Heidelberg partnered with Danka, Canon and IBM to sell its print engine to the world's print-on-demand customers as the Danka/Heidelberg Digimaster 9110, the Canon Imagerunner 110 and the IBM Infoprint 2000. Now, everyone wants