Press Processes, Continued
Electronic
digitization
Electronic digitization and laser technology are replacing chemical-dependant
printing and photographic processes. In addition to high-end copier options,
these copier-printers incorporate servers to interface with microcomputers,
scanners, and disk drives to accept electronic data from remote work stations.
They allow you to edit, move, cut, paste, scan, merge files, create instant
halftones from continuous tone masters, and enhance photography. These
electronic copier-printers and digital duplicators have a signature setup and a
bypass feature to eject jobs from the machine for traditional bindery
operations. Some machines have collators, folders, stitchers, and trimmers
to produce quality bindery in the finishing operation. Job orders are also part
of the electronic programming feature of the machine. This new generation
of printing technology allows total electronic prepress preparation of
documents. Electronic printing equipment has excellent resolution of 600
dots per inch (DPI) and 1 GB (gigabyte) of memory. Scan rate is 20 plus
documents per minute and press speeds exceed 135 pages per minute (PPM).
This future generation of printing presses may be more in the domain of the
Lithographer's Mate and isolated to a few ships and stations who can afford
this costly machinery, but you should aggressively seek and learn it’s
processes.
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