Generally speaking, digital printing devices fall into two categories.
Digital presses and ink jet devices.
Let's take a look at digital presses first.
One popular series is the Xerox iGen series.
Now, there are other Xerox printers that are devoted to high speed black
and white output, but here, we're going to
concentrate on their high-end color output device.
The iGen is capable of very high quality output.
It's a toner-based press, it's very high speed, 100 pages per minute or so.
And the current version is capable of resolution of 4800 by 600 dpi, and
that makes it capable of printing up to 300 line screen, very nice quality work.
The media is limited in all of these digital presses.
For the iGen, currently it's a little over 14 inches by 22.5 inches.
But that's enough for a tabloid size page.
There's some support for special-mix spot colors.
But you're going to find on all of
the digital presses, you're not going to have as
wide a variety of pantone colors, for example,
as you would have available for offset printing.
However, one thing you have to keep in mind is that the
colorants that are used by these presses have a wider color gamut.
And that means even without the special mix colors, they can do a very good
job of approximating spot colors, often better
than you could achieve on an offset press.
The HP Indigo is a widely used, very high quality digital press.
It uses something HP calls ElectroInk.
And it provides support for special-mix spot colors as well as some interesting
things, such as invisible inks that only show up under certain lighting sources.
It's capable of up to 1219 dpi, and that means it can run up to 230 line screen.
The most common media used in the Indigo is 13
by 19 inches, but some other models can take larger media.
So, let's take a look at an Indigo press in action.
First of all, notice how small it is, what a compact footprint.
Notice too, that it isn't on a conventional press room floor.
That means that a printer can install an Indigo where
they certainly wouldn't have room for a large offset press.
Inkjet devices are some of the most
powerful players in the digital printing marketplace.
The large format and grand format inkjet make it possible to
print things that were almost impossible before, or certainly a challenge.
They provide support for roll media.
The flatbed devices can print really unusual objects and unusual
substrates, such as metal or glass or plastic, even ceramics.
And because of UV inks and very
sturdy substrates, now they can print outdoor signage.
They can even print billboards and building ramps and vehicle wraps.
Here, you can see the inkjet head traversing.
It moves back and forth as the substrate feeds through.
Notice how many ink wells there are.
That's because of all the colors that it can print at once.
And here, you can see some corrugated foam
core board coming out of the inkjet printer.
This is going to be used as a display in a movie lobby.
So, that gives you an idea of how thick substrate they can print.
They can actually print much thicker than this,
but it really gives them a lot of flexibility.