Zirkon

Las Vegas is the home of Creel Printing, a heatset web and sheetfed commercial printer that's betting heavily on the payoff of digital prepress. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Las Vegas. The most infamous desert oasis. A city that never sleeps. Towering casinos, massive neon billboards, throngs of vacationers, glittering wedding chapels. Decadent, opulent—and a few other descriptive dents. No wonder legends played here: Sinatra, Elvis, Creel. What's that, not familiar with Creel? Creel Printing just happens to be one of the largest commercial printers in Nevada, operating in the shadows of Las Vegas' most famous casinos—Bally's, Harrah's, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, Circus Circus,

BY ERIK CAGLE Shorter runs, longer runs, less waste, reduced makeready time, skilled labor shortages, increased automation—some of the biggest issues facing the commercial printers who use heatset web offset presses are also some of the oldest issues. They are issues constantly being addressed. It is a flourishing market, as some of the open web industry's manufacturing stalwarts now offer enhanced commercial models or are breaking into the heatset specialty for the first time. That gives the printer more variety of choices in both the quantity and quality departments. For the manufacturers already entrenched in the heatset web market, the quest is to answer

When it comes right down to it, savvy, educated print buyers have one sweeping requirement of their commercial printers, expressed here in no-frills vernacular: They want more for less. And, taking into consideration the expert engineering of printing presses on the market today, it's increasingly possible to give them just that. Good news for printing executives who might be poring over product literature, grappling with some tough choices. Printers shopping for web offset presses all agree on one thing: less is more. Less makeready time, less manpower and less paper waste equal more profitability. "Right now, [web printers] are looking for a