TechWatch™

RIP Technology Transfers Between Print Plant and Office Machines

Graphic Arts Monthly - March 2006

Henry Freedman

Coupling color printers geared to office use with maturing graphic arts raster image processors (RIPs) can result in powerful production printer options. It's no wonder that these less-costly machines are accelerating the spread of digital color printing.

Instead of investing $300,000 in a high-end digital sheetfed printer—running 2400 x 2400 dpi color at 80 pages per minute— you can obtain a 50-ppm unit at the same quality level for a more modest investment of $67,000.

We are talking here only of image quality. Many other factors enter into the value proposition for higher-volume environments considering an 80-ppm device. But transfer of sophisticated, high-quality print technology from the printing plant floor into the office copyroom will bring outstanding print capabilities to many businesses.

This transfer also provides a great advantage for printing production facilities because their production volume and knowledge base are greater than in an office setting. Xerox and Creo Print On-Demand Solutions (PODS) have been successfully delivering this new cost/quality capability to market for several months with the Creo Spire CX250 color server.

Creo, acquired in 2005 by Kodak Graphic Communications Group (GCG), employs more than 1,000 people in Herzlia, Israel, many devoted to developing electronics for the future of color printing. Decades of R&D at predecessor Scitex Corp. cemented Creo's position as a preeminent developer of graphic arts image processing and writing systems.

After the acquisition, Kodak established the Creo PODS group, an independently managed unit within Kodak GCG committed to expanding the supply of color servers for digital presses to a variety of partners.

The ability of PODS to come to market with a proven, sustainable and wide-ranging product line has garnered it a worldwide leadership position for high-end color reproduction.

Creo PODS now makes this quality affordable for the little guy in combination with the Xerox DC250 printer/copier. The production flexibility is equally compelling.

The Creo Spire CX250 RIP line is a "living system," able to transform and grow along different expansion paths as you discover what fits best in your firm's evolving digital print work.

It's available in three configurations: a bustled version attaches directly to the press (circled in the photo), an enhanced upgrade control station, and a professional upgrade kit for high-end graphic arts color management. In addition, PODS offers a growing range of accessory kits that support file storage and management, and variable data printing (VDP) software, providing an excellent migration path. These offerings also provide capabilities for emerging JDF information- interchange management.

Creo PODS offers advanced VDP capabilities for the office and printing plant with the easyto- use Optimized Mail Merge feature that integrates Microsoft Word files into high-end digital printing. This software can perform VDP with unlimited records in one job, completely integrated and imposed. (Get a trial copy at www.creopod.com.)