Despite bleak worldwide economic news that had dominated the media in the preceding weeks, GRAPH EXPO® 2008 exceeded expectations and enjoyed brisk business. While overall attendance was down 12.5 percent over the record-setting GRAPH EXPO 2007 show, interested qualified buyers from 8,800 individual companies—marking a slight increase in the number of unique companies over last year's show.
Prepress Agfa will debut its chemistry-free thermal digital plate, the ThermoFuse-based Azura TS. It features an advanced clean-out system and improved contrast for easier visual inspections and offers higher throughput of up to 50 percent or 100,000 impressions. Agfa’s ThermoFuse technology physically bonds images to the plate without chemical processing. PlateWriter 2000, an ink-jet system designed for small- to medium-format offset printing, will be shown by Glunz & Jensen. The system jets a Liquid Dot solution onto non-photosensitive aluminium plates. The imaged plates are then manually fed through a finishing unit that dries them and bonds the liquid dots. Heidelberg will demonstrate Prinect Inpress
JUSTIFYING NEW equipment on paper is one thing, but real-world verification is far more satisfying. For Jim Sebes that happened not long ago when a customer of the Cuyahoga County Central Services Printing and Reproduction (CSPR) Division asked for a quote on 50,000 single-color, one-sided documents, to be run on the in-plant’s two-color Sakurai press. A local copy shop also made a bid. The customer’s eyes nearly bulged at the result. “They couldn’t believe the price difference,” recalls Sebes, senior printing coordinator for the eight-employee in-plant. It was $1,400 cheaper to print the job on his in-plant’s offset press. This incident only underscored the
MBO America has became the exclusive and proprietary distributor of Herzog + Heymann (H+H) pharmaceutical and miniature folding products. This includes the H&H KL112 specialty folder, ideal for small folded and glued information material, pharmaceutical instructions, perforated lottery products and extremely thin papers. Its radial folding roller adjustment keeps the paper in constant contact with the rollers, maintaining paper position integrity.
IPG attended MBO America’s recent “Innovation Days” event, and now you can too, thanks to our latest video. It highlights the multi-vendor digital book factories that covered the floor at the MBO mini trade show. More than 20 providers of digital printing, on-demand finishing and mailing solutions brought their wares to the event. Our video shows how these document factories work, from roll-fed printing to sheeting, folding, binding and trimming. To watch the latest IPG video, click here: www.ipgonline.com/video/video.bsp?sid=89339&var=video
MBO’s recent open house was a mini trade show featuring printing and inline binding equipment from 20 vendors. Here’s a look at the highlights.
WHILE HARDWARE and software manufacturers have yet to devise a tonic that can cure the hung-over stitcher operator, many aspects of postpress efficiency have been adequately addressed...depending upon whom you ask. Some feel we have made leaps and bounds en route to shortening the after-press process; others believe we’re still being short changed. We’ve asked a group of industry experts their opinion on the progress made in automating postpress processes. Most agree that some areas have been bolstered, but they don’t agree on which areas. “I’d say binding, folding and stitching equipment have drastically improved to the point where we have eliminated a
For years, MBO America has hosted an open house at its Westampton, N.J., facility. Recently, though, the company turned this event into a mini trade show by inviting more than 20 leading providers of digital printing, on-demand finishing, mailing and gluing solutions to show their wares as well. “We’re not Graph Expo, but we’re not just an open house any more,” observed Sharon McKenney, MBO marketing manager. Called “Innovation Days,” the three-day show hosted approximately 300 visitors from all over the country. Equipment focused on real-world transactional printing and finishing applications, personalization, on-demand book/brochure production and sophisticated mailing solutions. In several instances, exhibitors partnered to showcase
IT’S BEEN a busy month for me. After a long break, I hit the road for a series of conferences and plant tours that brought me from Texas to Ohio to Washington, D.C. First I headed down to the University of North Texas to attend the TACUP conference. The Texas Association of College and University Printers has been meeting for 30 years now, and this year’s event drew 42 attendees. I had the opportunity to talk with in-plant managers from all over Texas. I also gave a presentation that included suggestions on steps in-plants can take to survive and thrive. (See full story on page
THERE ARE two sets of attendees walking the show floor at Graph Expo. The first type has done his/her homework, knows all the primary players for a given product, has whittled down the equipment choices to a short list, and is at the show to see the machines in action. This person is on a mission. The second type has been to all the booths offering freebies, has three or four posters, two flash drives, one guitar and assorted other trinkets. For him, this show is a two-day reprieve from work. This tire kicker doesn’t really have an agenda. An educated shopper is the
