C. Clint Bolte & Associates

The Chicago Marathon and its 40,000 runners coincided with the first day of Graph Expo and set the mood for the most exciting print trade show in North America in many a year - frenetic, fast-paced, fun. Coming off the exhilarating DRUPA 2004, the suppliers and manufacturers showed their latest equipment that is ready to be placed into service. Printers who allowed only a couple of days to take it all in could not help but be frustrated at the myriad of educational venues as well as the workflow and productivity enhancing offerings to review. It simply took longer than expected to do justice to all there was to see, learn, and experience.

While there were no block buster technology announcements, several mainline manufacturers presented note worthy enhancements to their existing product lines and nearly without exception showed their JDF-enabled equipment running live in an integrated fashion both in their own booths and those of complimentary process vendors throughout McCormick Place. Computer-integrated manufacturing via JDF, pre through post press, was the echoing theme of Graph Expo '04. While press enhancements were plentiful, no small amount of intensity of excitement was provided by the post press vendors, as the printing industry seems eager and ready to recapitalize their aging finishing operations.

For the second year in a row the Graphic Arts Show Company organized isolated areas for key topics of increasing interest to printers. These included the Wide Format Pavilion, Mailing and Fulfillment Pavilion, Bindery Industries of America (BIA) and JDF Pavilion. These first two were considerably larger than last year's initial effort. Popular venues were the theater section in the heart of each of these pavilions. The Mailing & Fulfillment Theater held 14 free hour-long sessions over the four-day trade show presented by leading consultants and suppliers. The Wide Format Theater had 13 free sessions. This did not include the daily brunch seminars or the 62 half day seminars put on by the industry's leading educators and topical consultants. The full day symposium on technology and workflow trends, Executive Outlook 2004, which is traditionally held the day before Graph Expo and Converting Expo opens, will be covered in a subsequent article.

There were 33 vendors in the Mailing and Fulfillment Pavilion while 110 vendors throughout the trade show offered some solution to these value-added services. Likewise the nearby BIA area had specialty vendors of interest to many fulfillment firms. The only noticeable vendors not present in the Graph Expo Mailing and Fulfillment Pavilion and who were present two weeks ago among the 98 suppliers at the National Postal Forum were the distribution consolidators. The use of these subcontractors by printers and mailing services firms to save a little money by drop shipping deeper into the postal network is an increasing trend.

Next year at Print '05 the Graphic Arts Show Company hopes to have a networked display of selected mailing systems to display typical workflows. Full computer-integrated manufacturing via the CIP4 and JDF initiatives will be important for the printing industry, but these manufacturers' equipment are not now JDF-enabled.

An actual U.S. Army Deployable Print Production Center (DPPC) along with its National Guard contingent, several of whom were in Iraq printing psychological leaflets from identical equipment units, were guests of the Graphic Arts Show Company and occupied a popular booth under an American flag banner. Comprised of a color scanner, PC, Corel Draw software, RISO digital duplicator, and cutter, this mobile factory is mounted on a Humvee towing an equipment trailer. The print production equipment has been slightly modified to Army specifications to include shock mounting.

Its cadre of two to five print warriors prepare thousands of four color leaflets that are banded together and inserted into a plastic "bomb" disseminator. This "bomb" is dropped from Air Force or Navy jets from an altitude of about 30,000 foot. At 10,000 feet the bomb is programmed to come apart automatically scattering the leaflets over a multi-mile radius for an expected saturation of a leaflet per square meter. Nearly two dozen different samples of the actual leaflets deployed in the pre-Iraq war were handed out to show attendees.

The Research & Engineering Council of NAPL Technology Breakfast drew 250 attendees to hear eleven quick fire presentations of the show highlights from the various production processes plus the "Must See 'ems." Additionally, Malcom Keif, Professor of the Graphic Communications Department of California Polytechnic State University, received the 2004 Print and Graphics Scholarship Foundation Educator of the Year Award. Here are a few of the more salient comments from the presenters;

Mark Evans, JohnsByrne's Vice President of Technology Business Development, in reflecting on the prepublishing offerings said there is a distinct "emphasis on how products impact the business. Many vendors are offering financial models and professional consulting services." This same business planning consultant concept is almost universally available to prospects and clients from virtually all main line suppliers in all processes.

Steve Musselman, AGFA's worldwide Graphics Systems Business Development Manager, gave a treatise on the evolution of printing plates and computer-to-plate. With inexpensive 2-up and 4-up CTP machines now mainline from several suppliers, the evolution continues with JetPlate offering an inkjet CTP unit. An inkjet marking fluid is applied to conventional plate, which is then conventionally processed.

Barb Pellow, Chief Marketing Officer for Kodak's Graphic Communications Group, summarized the digital press area by saying that the manufacturers were providing (1) increased reliability and quality, (2) more cost effective single color (black) equipment, (3) improved workflow solutions, and (4) emphasis on standards compliance.

Dick Holliday, Principal of 3P consultancy, discussed the new web presses on the floor but commented on the continued activity by the auxiliary manufacturers to enhance legacy equipment. For example, QuadTech and WPC are offering closed loop ink control. Original equipment and specialty vendors readily discuss their rebuilding services (of legacy presses).

Andy Fetherman, Muller Martini's Digital Finishing Manager, described the bindery integration and full systems automation from entry level up through high-speed lines offered by several vendors. On-demand book integration was shown in several booths, each with lots of partners.

The United State Postal Service (USPS) kept their customer service representatives busy in their booth showing printers how to navigate their usps.gov website to obtain free books and information. While started in 1998, their Confirm Service will be a vital resource for printers who want to trace and track their direct mail projects and particularly variable imaged products to completed delivery. This allows their client to implement a closely coordinated complimentary marketing thrust from either telemarketing or e-mail broadcasting.

Variable data and imaging presses were in many booths with noticeable improvement in the quality of the inkjet offerings. Buskro (buskro.com) introduced their Sapphire inkjet printer with four heads covering a 10" image area at up to 660 dpi. While shown at DRUPA, global sales began October 1. Their BK 1700 controller provides sapphire's job management and system control. In the future both units will be capable of running 8 heads covering 20" of image area.

Another notable variable data printing system was Kodak's Versamark VX5000e, which produces up to 2,000 pages a minute with a duty cycle of 60 million impressions a month. An interesting high volume operation was the combination two-unit Muller Martini Concepta™ variable size web press running in line with the Nipson VaryPress™ 400 to produce variable data, direct mail pieces.