EFI

california CERRITOS—National Card, Label and Affixing Inc. (NCLA) has purchased a Duplo DC-545HC slitter/cutter/creaser. The company is printing personalized marketing materials on an HP Indigo digital press, and then finishing on the DC-545HC. CITY OF INDUSTRY—K-1 Packaging Group, a privately held package printer located here, has installed a six-color, 41˝ KBA Rapida 105 sheetfed press featuring KBA's Logotronic system and a 12 ft. extended delivery. SANTA ANA—Q2 Inc. has purchased a new six-color Heidelberg Speedmaster CD 102 press, marking the company's expansion into a full-service, seamless provider of digital photography, prepress and printing services. colorado GRAND JUNCTION—Colorado Printing is now using EFI's Printcafe

BY chris Bauer Managing Editor The year 2003 can be summed up as a period that had its ups and downs as far as the commercial printing industry is concerned. For every plant closing, there seemed to be a plant expansion project. For every poor financial report, there was a major capital equipment expenditure. Some big names left the industry, making way for a new generation of leaders. And the industry's biggest annual trade show left attendees and exhibitors with a feeling of hope. Let's take a look back. The beginning of the year brought with it changes to the top spots at several

In May 1998, William Davis, then new chairman and CEO of RR Donnelley—one of the largest printing companies in the world—said, "In this game, manufacturing discipline will win. The craftsman who has to leave his thumbprint on every page will lose." He continued: "We are a decade behind in manufacturing best practices." His comments reflect the modern challenge of the graphic arts. Traditionally the manufacture of print has been craft-oriented, from design through to print. Designers made their reputations by creating unusual print pieces, with beautiful typography, tough-to-match colors, and unusual trim and bind requirements. Printers made their reputations by dealing under deadline with these

BY MARK SMITH Technology Editor The vendors are loath to admit it, but on the surface there is a growing degree of parity in the capabilities of today's prepress workflow solutions. Their core systems are typically client-server based, database driven and handle tasks such as preflighting, PDF conversion/normalization, trapping, imposition and rendering. At the same time, advances in technology have led to workflow being widely viewed as a digital continuum—from file creation to final output. This shared vision dovetails with the industry's move toward computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) and implementation of the JDF (Job Definition Format) specification. Internet portals for online proofing and job

Bridging the Digital Divide BY MARK SMITH Technology Editor Trade shows are supposed to be a forum for presenting solutions to meet the needs of attendees. What many people took away from workflow displays at GRAPH EXPO and CONVERTING EXPO, however, was a bag full of questions . . . and maybe the odd poster or two, a foam sword, canisters of M&Ms, etc. That doesn't mean attendees weren't looking to buy. Exhibitors were more ardent than usual about the quality of the leads they were getting, and they claimed to also be pleased with the quantity. "Turned the corner" was a popular

News Fit for Printing Extra! Extra! Read all about it. The graphic arts industry is launching a new campaign to promote the use of print as a replacement for, and complement to, other media. I know, grizzled industry veterans might point out, other efforts have been tried in the past—typically losing steam over time. But this effort has some of the biggest industry guns behind it as founding members, including vendors such as Agfa, EFI, Heidelberg, IBM, MAN Roland, Scitex Digital and Xerox, as well as prominent printers like Mail-Well, RR Donnelley, Quad/Graphics, Sandy Alexander and Franchise Services (the parent company of PIP

Solutions Forum Gives Canon a Platform CHICAGO—Canon U.S.A. recently held its Digital Solutions Forum 2003, an annual showcase of the company's technology and strategic vision. This year's event occupied more than 100,000 square feet of the McCormick Place Convention Center. A large portion was devoted to displaying solutions for key markets targeted by Canon, including financial services, education (on-demand books), law enforcement, general office, healthcare, color publishing and legal services. "Today's demanding technology customer is giving considerable attention to workflow and the bottom line, and what an investment made now will mean for the future," asserts Kinya Uchida, company president and CEO.

Windy City Printer Upgrades Bindery CHICAGO—Schiele Graphics, a member of the Schiele Group, has purchased a Duplo System 4000 collator bookletmaker from Best Graphics. John Schiele, president, says that what got him excited about the machine was its ability to perform "intelligent collating," an add-on computer and software system that enables complex collating functions involving multiple components. alabama MONTGOMERY—Davis Printing has reportedly become the first printer in the state to employ FM screening. Creo's Prinergy workflow, two Intigris 800 proofers and a Trendsetter 800 Quantam are being used to produce 20 micron Staccato screening. The company plans to produce 90 percent of its

By Bob Neubauer and Mike Llewellyn NEW YORK—Approximately 27,200 attendees criss-crossed the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center recently to see the latest digital printing equipment at the 10th annual On Demand Digital Printing & Publishing Conference. The exhibit hall seemed much larger this year, due in part to On Demand's co-location with the AIIM Conference & Exposition. As a result, there were 438 exhibitors, compared with 150+ at last year's show. Two of the show's largest exhibitors, Xerox and Heidelberg, had adjoining booths, with the Xerox iGen3 sitting directly across the aisle from Heidelberg's NexPress 2100. Other large exhibit areas were hosted by Canon

System Enables Printers to be Self-Calibrating WEBSTER, NY—Printed colors have been one of the toughest things to get consistently right because there are so many variables in the production process, whether it is digital or traditional offset. Scientists at Xerox Corp.'s Webster research center now claim to have invented and patented an ultra-fast, low-cost spectrophotometer that they expect to streamline and simplify color printing. The spectrophotometer is said to cost less than one-sixth the price of current models. It can be embedded inside a digital printer to take color measurements on each passing page in a few milliseconds. As the paper moves at