Flint Group

Often overlooked and rarely explored, offset blankets and inks are those essential accessories that deserve a closer look. By Mike Llewellyn A trio of two-color offset presses keep University of Southern Maine's Administrative Services busy, says Production Supervisor Fred Degenhardt. To keep the quality of the impressions high, he says the in-plant has maintained a relationship with A.B.Dick to stock the shop with press blankets. "We run everything from business cards to clasp envelopes here," he says. Degenhardt explains that for the mid-sized presses the in-plant runs, he has found semi-compressible blankets to be ideal. "Softer blankets tend to mean less headaches for us,"

Digital presses are making in-roads into offset printing territory, but by no means is offset dying, according to offset vendors. by CAROLINE MILLER IT SEEMS as if all everyone is talking about lately is the rapid growth of the digital printing market. And as the output quality of digital presses comes closer to that of offset printing, some are even questioning the future viability of offset. Not Mike Grego, though. "Offset printing is alive and doing well," says Grego, marketing manager for Sakurai USA. "Digital direct-to-paper has taken a bite into the small-format, short-run work that was typically performed on duplicator presses. The majority

Print 01 featured numerous innovations in prepress, offset and bindery technologies. Find out all about them in part two of our show report. &002;by Bob Neubauer Walking the show floor at Print 01 was a printer's dream. Presses were churning out color posters, software was being demonstrated on large screens for small crowds, books were being folded, stitched and trimmed—wherever you looked, something was happening. Though the September 11 attacks brought the show to a halt, show management said about 66,300 people attended overall. Vendors reported a number of sales. Heidelberg's NexPress subsidiary sold more than 70 NexPress 2100 presses, part of

Managers Honored In-plant managers received more than just knowledge from the recent International Publishing Management Association conference in Portland, Ore. Dozens of them took home awards. The In-Print awards got the most attention. All 105 plaques were on display, and first-place winners had their awards presented to them on stage during the awards banquet. Boeing claimed the Best of Show victory, its fifth in 11 years. Additionally, IPMA recognized a number of in-plants for their accomplishments: • Duke Energy, of Houston, won IPMA's annual award for In-house Promotional Excellence for holding an open house in the company's lobby that drew more than 500

In part two of our Graph Expo report, we detail the latest advances in prepress, e-commerce, bindery and consumables. The recent Graph Expo show in Chicago drew more than 45,000 industry professionals to McCormick Place. Last month IPG took you there as we detailed many of the technologies on display, including direct imaging and digital printing innovations. But with nearly 575 exhibitors at the four-day event, we couldn't cover it all in one issue. So this month we're presenting even more Graph Expo highlights. Prepress Group Logic exhibited MassTransit, version 3.6, its high-speed digital file transfer and remote proofing software. MassTransit

Graph Expo marked the debut appearance of many of the technologies unveiled at Drupa. After seeing so many new technologies displayed at the massive Drupa trade show in Düsseldorf, Germany, trade journalists found few surprises at the recent Graph Expo show in Chicago. But it was for printers, not journalists, that McCormick Place opened its doors—and they were certainly impressed. "I thought the show was very complete, with more than enough new things to see and want," remarked Don Davis, associate director of LSU Graphic Services, in Baton Rouge, La. He went to the show to look at prepress and computer-to-plate (CTP) equipment and

In-plants are in the unique position of being both printers and print buyers. Because of this, E-commerce can be twice as helpful. In-plants can use auction sites to expand their customer base by taking in commercial work to fill their extra capacity. At the same time they can act as customers and find commercial printers to print their overflow work. If you have an existing relationship with an outside printer, you can use E-commerce solutions like Collabria.com, Noosh.com or Impresse.com to strengthen that relationship and make your workflow more efficient. You can also use these systems to manage the workflow between your customers