| Digital printing is a term that encompasses a lot of | | | | customers deemed quality acceptable for more and |
| different equipment that produce different products | | | | more products and uses. Color copiers came first and |
| and different levels of quality and expectations. | | | | use toner in the four base colors of CMYK to |
| First let's start with the term digital printing: | | | | reproduce color photographs and images. The quality |
| Digital printing's definition is taking an electronic file and | | | | is on the low end for color and is susceptible to |
| directly from that file creating your final output without | | | | scratches and rubbing more than liquid ink. Then there |
| going to plates or any other type of intermediary step | | | | is the classification of digital presses. There are toner |
| or proof. It can be black or color. | | | | and two types of liquid ink presses. |
| The black is usually done by copiers on the low end | | | | All of these color machines have strengths and |
| and machines such as the Xerox Docutech or the | | | | weaknesses like any other kind of manufacturing |
| Kodak Digimaster. These machines are capable of @ | | | | process. Toner based machines are the IGen3 and the |
| 100 copies a minute. Even these machines use toner | | | | Nexpress. The quality is much better than color copiers |
| although they are capable of higher resolutions than | | | | but can still have toner look to them and sometimes |
| copiers. Although, higher quality than copiers the | | | | don't print smooth screenes. The only true offset |
| docutech & digimaster still don't rival true offset quality | | | | entries are either Heidelberg or Ryobi machines. These |
| of true offset presses. | | | | actually produce temporary plates to produce the print |
| The reasons these machines evolved and have | | | | job that is on press at that time. |
| become so popular is the ability to do low quantities at | | | | This is true offset printing but has some limitations |
| reasonable costs. They are limited as to the products | | | | because the vast % of machines are small format |
| and substrates that customers will use these machines | | | | and don't have the ink carrying capacity that larger |
| for.The evolution of doing this same thing to color was | | | | presses do. These machines also can't print variable |
| a natural evolution. The higher the quality the better it | | | | data printing where the image or text can be changed |
| could replace offset on the low end of the quantity | | | | from sheet to sheet. The other liquid ink machine is the |
| spectrum. | | | | HP Indigo family. The Indigo 3050 can print variable |
| Also as color digital printing machines improved | | | | data while rivaling offset quality. |
