Offset Printing - Sheet-Fed

Before installing a Glunz & Jensen PlateWriter 2000 in April, Gordon Rivera admits he didn’t know much about Glunz & Jensen. Then the coordinator of Campus Graphics at Allan Hancock College picked up his favorite graphic arts magazine, and everything changed. “I saw the Glunz & Jensen ad in your magazine,” he says, referring to IPG, “so I gave them a call...and I ended up buying it.”

In-plants have an opportunity to win an all-expense paid trip to the new xpedx Technology Center in Cincinnati. The two-day trip is valued at about $2,500 per winner.

Last week, IPG and other graphic arts journalists visited the new xpedx print technology center, located just outside of Cincinnati. The 11,000-square-foot facility is reportedly the only U.S. center demonstrating equipment from a variety of manufacturers.

On Monday, xpedx is set to open an 11,000-square-foot Technology Center in its metro Cincinnati headquarters. It will provide U.S. print professionals with a single location to learn about and test new equipment and technologies from top manufacturers. The exhibition center will spotlight technology covering all aspects of offset and digital printing, including creative, pre-press/workflow, press and post-press/fulfillment. Printers can evaluate new products, technologies and production techniques from major print industry suppliers in a live print production environment.

Even successful digital printing operations need a little offset sometimes. Take Simon Fraser University Document Solutions. In 2006, IPG detailed how this in-plant had moved from antiquated offset equipment to state-of-the-art digital printers like a Xerox iGen3. The shop didn’t completely abandon offset, though. It retained a four-color 20x29? Heidelberg Speedmaster 74. Now the in-plant has replaced that press with a five-color Heidelberg Speedmaster 52 with a coater. Not only has the shop’s productivity soared, the in-plant is keeping more work in-house as a result.

Sustainability starts at the corporate level. Several vendors are taking steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, use alternative energy sources, recycle and more.

Two years ago, University of Iowa Printing and Mailing Services jumped into short-run digital color with a new HP Indigo 5000. Now the 44-employee in-plant is moving into four-color offset as well.  The Iowa City-based shop just installed a four-color Komori Spica 29P perfector press. Since it went in, the press has been busy printing brochures, posters, newsletters and lots of perfecting work, says Steve Wilson, printing manager.

Two-color printing used to be fashionable, remarks Bob Tippins, manager of Graphic Services at Carleton University."But now everyone wants four-color,” he says. For an in-plant with a two-color press, however, this presented a small problem. The 23-employee, Ottawa, Ontario-based in-plant did some four-color work on its 25-year-old two-color Heidelbeg MOZP, but it was, Tippins admits, “very inefficient.

WSD of Nordhorn, Germany, has selected manroland Inc., to be the  exclusive North American distributor for its MAG-In® product line of on-press finishing blankets and dies.

HEIDELBERG, GERMANY—11/06/2008—In the first six months of financial year 2008/2009 (April 1, 2008 to September 30, 2008), Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) matched the previous year’s incoming orders thanks to the industry trade show drupa in May 2008. Looking at the second quarter (July to September 2008) in isolation, incoming orders fell sharply by around 23 percent due to the continuing financial crisis and the resultant global economic uncertainties. Incoming orders for the Heidelberg Group in the period under review totaled 1.872 billion Euro (previous year: 1.866 billion Euro), 721 million Euro of this in the second quarter (previous year: 932 million Euro). Sales by