Heidelberg

Polyester plates are helping many in-plants bring computer-to-plate technology into their shops, saving them time and money. The addition of computer-to-plate (CTP) technology is saving in-plants money. It eliminates the expense of outsourcing film or plates, a savings that is passed on to customers. In addition, in-plant employees are learning a more advanced way to go to the press, furthering their skills and increasing their value to the organization. At St. John Health Systems' in-plant, located in Warren, Mich., polyester plates are produced using an imagesetter, saving the shop money over outsourcing to a service bureau, as it did until two years ago.

Starting as a linotype operator in a hot metal shop, Richard Gonzales moved steadily upward to become director of the Kansas Division of Printing. As a kid growing up in Topeka, Kan., Richard Gonzales got some sage advice from his father. "My dad told me to learn a trade," recalls Gonzales, director of the Division of Printing for the Kansas Department of Administration. In those days, he says, the city's Hispanic citizens had limited options, and his father naturally wanted the best for him. So Gonzales did some thinking. "I was in high school and they had a printing class, and I took it—and

When shopping for a new folding machine, consider your volume, the types of jobs you'll need it for and the unit's ease of use. Speed doesn't always matter. FINISHING IS often the difference between a prize-winning piece and one that is thrown away. Nowhere was this more evident than at the judging for the In-Print 99 contest, where a number of entries were eliminated due to poor folds. If these jobs were not up to par for our judges, then your customers probably took notice too. When looking to bring a new folding machine into your in-plant, think about your volume and what types

Acrobat and PDF are starting to fulfill their prepress potential. Find out how to make them work for you. Unless you've been stranded on a remote Pacific atoll, there's virtually no way you could have avoided hearing about Acrobat and PDF (Portable Document Format). Not only has Adobe churned out numerous news releases, but other vendors are jumping on the bandwagon, as well—and with good reason: This application and its derivative file format are now coming of age. To recognize Adobe for its efforts to develop and promote PDF, In-Plant Graphics is honoring the San Jose, Calif.-based company with the 1999 Industry Leader of

On-demand printing may not be as cutting edge a topic as it was in the early '90s, but that didn't stop nearly 20,000 people from descending on the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York for the recent On Demand Digital Printing and Publishing Strategy Conference and Exposition. The conference, now in its sixth year, featured 275 exhibits along with daily keynotes and conference sessions. In-Plant Graphics moderated several sessions and attended many more. (Our full report will appear in a future issue.) Personalization seemed to be the big topic this year, with several vendors combining variable data with color printing to

High-end scanning and imagesetting systems continue to push the limits of image manipulation and consistency. WORKING TOGETHER, scanners and imagesetters provide the powerful and precise images needed to create the products your customers expect and deserve. "Today's properly managed workflows allow close monitoring of input [scanner] and output [imagesetter] conditions to assure the consistency of the desired results," says Al Eddy, special promotions manager for electronic imagining at Fujifilm. "If printing parameters are known, the scanner can be the first level of control to create image files that already have the proper characteristics of a press and/or printing condition 'embedded' in them.

The leaders of the digital graphic arts industry converged in Boston recently to display their latest wares. Seybold returned to Boston this year after a two-year stint in New York—and what a homecoming it was. All the leaders of the digital graphic arts industry were on hand to show off their new technologies. Adobe, naturally, took a lead position at the show, as the father of PDF. Adobe President John Warnock and CEO Charles Geschke laid out their collective version of publishing for both print and the Internet during the exposition's opening keynote. Both Adobe executives stressed that publishers in the near future

According to a new study, significant cost and performance improvements have qualified digital color presses for mainstream in-plant printing. In-plant operations have always been pioneers in digital production printing. A decade ago, many in-plants began to add networked PostScript printers to produce books, manuals, directories, forms and other products. In fact, the in-plant market was the largest initial opportunity for the Xerox DocuTech, which essentially defined printing on demand (POD) and supplanted small-format, "short-run" offset production for many corporate applications. On the color side, in-plants have been major customers for mid-speed digital printers such as the Xerox DocuColor 40. However, the digital color revolution—promoted

In-plants serving printing equipment manufacturers not only produce printed work, but also lend a hand in planning equipment improvements. Back In 1997, A.B.Dick came up with a plan. The Niles, Ill.-based company wanted to resurrect its in-plant and use it both to showcase its products and test its new equipment. With that goal in mind, Greg Zanoni was picked to serve as corporate demonstration floor and print shop manager. Now, two years later, Zanoni's in-plant produces about 98 percent of A.B.Dick's printed work, including all of its business stationery and marketing materials. What's more, the 3,900-square-foot in-plant doubles as a demonstration center where

Though in-plant managers aren't ready to abandon their offset presses yet, they say the process needs to change to compete with digital printing. As print runs get smaller and clients learn to accept digital print quality, why should in-plants bother to stay in the offset business at all? That's a question many managers are pondering as the world continues to race into the digital age. Already several in-plants have dumped offset altogether after finding that high-speed digital printers can handle their work more cost effectively. Still, most in-plants have no intention of giving up their presses entirely. They've paid for them and they