DIGITAL digest

One thing all the manufacturing operations have in common is the company's founding principle, according to Watanabe. "A person only gets one chance to capture a given photo in a lifetime, so we can't afford to compromise on quality with our products," he contends.

A couple of interesting bits of trivia about the printing plate line are that it stretches some 900 feet, with the machine's total travel path equaling nearly one-half mile. Since it takes six days to thread the line from scratch, narrow leader rolls of aluminum are used to keep the machine threaded at almost all times. A system not unlike a flying paster on a web press provides the two minutes of stop time needed to weld a new roll of aluminum onto the end of an expiring roll.