FUJIFILM Graphic Systems Div.

BY MARK SMITH Technology Editor Given all the debate about the technology of coatings in recent years, one might think printing plates are an exception to the rule that it is what's below the surfaces that really matters. One thing almost all of the solutions, even analog plates, have in common, though, is an aluminum base. Polyester plates are the exception, of course. This commonality in printing plates hit home earlier this year when vendors notified customers of price increases due to the rising cost of raw materials. Aluminum prices reportedly have risen some 40 percent over the past two years, and higher

Web Printers Hit The Race Track DALLAS—Sun Chemical offered Web Offset Offset Association Conference attendees the opportunity to climb into a NASCAR race car for a high-speed ride around the track at the Texas Motor Speedway. Of the 250 guests in attendance at the event, nearly 160 people elected to ride as passengers in the stock cars, which reached speeds of 170 miles per hour as they sped around the oval track. DiMS! organizing print's entire European staff have relocated to a brand new, purpose-built, state-of-the-art office building in Lichtenvoorde, the Netherlands. The building is equipped with ultra-modern demo spaces and well-equipped training classrooms. KBA North America

Attendees Soak Up the Views ORLANDO, FL—In a bid to inject new energy into the event and build attendance, the Vue/Point Conference was relocated to sunny Florida for its recent 2005 run. The results were mixed with regard to those goals, but attendees seemed pleased with the event overall. Judging by a show of hands in the opening session, there clearly was a spike in the percentage of first-time attendees. Also, representation by printers—as opposed to vendors—was said to be up. However, the total attendee number held more or less steady from the 2004 event in Washington, DC. There were several topics of

BY MARK SMITH Technology Editor Few things are as fundamental to the color offset printing process as screening. Add to that the experience built up with conventional screening, general resistance to change and some technical issues, and it's easy to understand the industry's caution when it comes to alternative screening solutions. The category of enhanced screening technologies now has been expanded to include what are referred to as "hybrid" systems, along with true stochastic or frequency modulated (FM) screening. Hybrid technology claims to combine the benefits of conventional, or AM (amplitude modulated), and FM screening. One group of specialty screening solutions that won't

GREENWOOD, SC—Fuji Photo Film recently celebrated the startup of a new plate line for the production of digital computer-to-plate (CTP) pre-sensitized plates as part of a $100 million expansion at its North American manufacturing and research complex here. On hand for the festivities were hundreds of guests, suppliers, customers and company associates. The Greenwood facility will produce Fujifilm's Brillia line of digital plates, including the latest violet photopolymer plates for the newspaper market. The family of plates feature the company's proprietary MG-MultiGrain technology. "This new, highly productive line is designed to provide our customers throughout North, Central and South America with the widest range

BY MARK SMITH Technology Editor It’s been more than a decade since the first high-volume, modern digital color printing systems were introduced. Heidelberg and Presstek teamed up to launch the digital offset (GTO DI, in this case) product category in 1991. A few years later, the Indigo EPrint and Agfa/Xeikon Chromapress ushered in the era of the all-digital production color printing systems. In the future, though, 2004 may be looked back upon as a key transition period in the maturation of digital printing as a business segment—both on the vendor and user side. No fundamentally new technologies were unveiled, but all the vendors

The world of commercial printing can be a cruel one. Just ask Gene Hamrick, president and CEO of the UBS Printing Group located in Corona, CA, just outside of Los Angeles. When the market shifts, no one mails out a postcard to the affected parties—they find out the hard way. That was the case with Hamrick's company, which he started in 1984 as a printing, packaging and label brokerage before delving into commercial print production in 1989. Founded in Orange County, UBS Printing was ideally situated to print manuals, company brochures and direct mail for the surrounding computer

BY MARK SMITH Technology Editor Not to get philosophical, but if a word comes to mean everything, there's a danger of it ending up to mean nothing. The digital revolution was already on its way to making "workflow" a catch-all term in prepress, when the rise of CIM (computer-integrated manufacturing) extended its use to the entire print production process. As a result, an ever wider array of products now can be called digital workflow solutions. For the purposes of this article, the definition is being limited to the evolution of what used to be called prepress systems. Vendors have responded to this trend with

Fujifilm Adds PS Line at Plate Facility GREENWOOD, SC—Enovation Graphic Systems, a Fujifilm company, recently teamed up with Fuji Photo Film to provide a tour of the latter's plate line expansion at its Fujifilm-South Carolina manufacturing site. The project, which included adding more than 100,000 square feet of manufacturing space, is said to represent a $100 million investment. Fujifilm went public with its plan to add the plate line—which it has designated P7—in March of 2003 and, by August of this year, had completed the first production run on the new machine. It is designed to produce all of the manufacturer's pre-sensitized (PS) plates, but will

by MaRK SMITH Technology Editor Weak strains of the great violet vs. thermal CTP debate cropped up in some post-Drupa reports, and then were echoed in postings on the PrintPlanet.com "Computer to Plate Pressroom, CTP Technologies" eCommunity and other industry forums. These discussions largely have covered old ground, but two pending developments are seen as having the potential to change the competitive picture. CORRECTION:Heidelberg announced a new option in its Prosetter violet platesetter line prior to Drupa, which should have been included in the printed version of this story. With the new Multi Cassette Loader (MCL), any Prosetter can now image up to four