Short-Run Digital Color Printing
Is short-run digital color printing in your future? When does it make sense? Is it acceptable for certain color projects?
These are questions that everyone who has any kind of product bulletins, point of sale sheets or brochures has asked their print vendor at one time. Midlands’s unique process of Digital Print on Demand Color offers all the benefits of POD while still maintaining the highest level of color quality.
Research has shown that adding color to your documents is one of the best ways to generate attention in today's tough business environment. Color makes documents stand out, accelerates learning, and gets results. Conventional color systems can be complicated to operate, expensive to run, and require constant adjustments. But today’s color production systems set a bright new standard for digital color printing by incorporating innovative technology to bring you exceptional quality, reliability and consistency.
Digital Color POD finds its efficiencies and cost effectiveness through streamlining the process. The operation is highly automated greatly reducing administration, , allowing for revision control and incorporating established business rules and parameters.
Benefits
• Reduce and potentially eliminate warehousing and all the costs, risks, and hassles associated with inventory management.
• Distribute the most current content directly to the end-user at all times.
• Include variable data for the greatest impact or to reduce data so the publication becomes model specific.
Environmental Impact
• Digital printing, whether it is black and white or color, requires little or no make-ready eliminating unnecessary waste.
• Plates are not required, therefore the chemicals and equipment needed to burn a plate are eliminated.
• Pulling sheets and adjusting ink density throughout the press run are eliminated, once again eliminating the amount of paper used.
• It is estimated that 31% of all printed materials are thrown out because they have become outdated. POD allows for the philosophy of selling the product first, then printing only what’s sold, eliminating the need to scrap out of date material.
Production Efficiencies
• Digital technology allows for full color print to be applied to paper stock across a single run through the press shortening the process time.
• A digital file can be saved once and submitted to any of a number of output devices from print to cd-rom to web publishing with minimal file manipulation or redundant file storage.
• Output can also be sent to either cut-sheet and continuous feed printers, depending upon the run size, quality, and finishing needs from the press.
Quality and Consistency
• Digital print engines require no chemicals to mix, no plate pressure adjustments to make throughout the run, no plate breakdown, no ink build-up on the rollers, and very little operator intervention.
• In traditional lithographic printing, the image quality was very dependent upon the skill level of the operator. Run to run, operator to operator, digital printing offers very little fluctuation guaranteeing consistent color output from the first image to the last.
• Digital machinery has internal monitors that constantly look at and adjust as the job is running ensuring the first image is the same as the last image.
• Digital proofing is not a simulation, as it is in the offset process. Rather, digital proofs are printed on the actual production device, permitting the designer to see exactly how the piece will turn out.
If you would like to see firsthand how MIR’s digital color solutions compare to your current lithographic options we urge you to contact your sales representative. Send us an example of your current color materials and we’ll be happy to provide you with samples.
For more information on MIR’s POD process please refer to our POD section of our website by following the below link, or ask your sales representative. http://www.midlandcorp.com/ProductsServices/OnDemand/index.htm