The third stage of printing press development

Since entering the 21st century, printing machinery has ushered in the third stage of development. Some models of sheet-fed offset printing presses can reach 17,000-18,000 prints/hour, but manufacturers do not strive to increase the maximum printing speed of the printing press, but through the application of information technology to further shorten the pre-press preparation time and replacement The time of the job seeks higher production efficiency.

In the area of printing machinery automation, technologies such as networking, production integration, digital workflow, and management information system (MIS) linking have become the focus of development. Heidelberg's CP2000 automatic control system in addition to the entire machine from paper feeding, paper feeding and guiding, inking, water feeding, plate change, register, cleaning, drying, coating, powder spraying and paper delivery, etc. In addition to pre-setting, adjustment and fault diagnosis of the work link, it also has the functions of realizing the networking of all production processes of the printing enterprise and online transmission of prepress image processing data (CIP3/PPF or CIP4/JDF data). In the new century, most offset printing press manufacturers have developed corresponding DI digital printing presses.

In addition, in order to meet people's demand for high-end color prints, 8-color or even 10-color multi-color double-sided printing and additional in-line post-press processing functions have become various sheet-fed offset presses (including small offset presses, DI direct The development trend of plate making machines and large offset printing presses, and the technology is becoming more and more mature, this type of printing machine has begun to squeeze a part of the market that originally belonged to the web printing machine.