Here's another. I don't know why, but I had to do that horrible thing of backspacing lines of text up to those short lines so things would look even and be easy to read. I unwordwrapped in notepad to try to prevent that, but it didn't work. Any suggestions? I would never have started this if I'd realized...I was going to paste more, but it's midnight...
This is old history, (December '96) and most of us have read it. But I enjoyed reading it while thinking about how many new relationships and alliances have been established in the last year while the relationship with Heidelberg has continued!
from Printing World,
December 2, 1996
A PRESS TO DI FOR
The Heidelberg Quickmaster DI was arguably the star of the Drupa exhibition last year. GARETH WARD went to see Presstek, the company behind the press's developments which now has over 60 patents filed in the field of digital imaging.
Further information
The ancestor of the Heidelberg Quickmaster DI stands against a wall of a loading bay in a factory in Hudson, New Hampshire. It's rather larger than a Quickmaster, has none of the smooth lines of its grandson and looks more like a redundant prop from an episode of Dr Who rather than a significant step in the development of the printing
press.
Nevertheless the central impression cylinder and digitally imaged printing units are in place. One day the machine will find its way to a museum. For now, home is the loading bay at Presstek.
The machine was not responsible for the first digitally imaged offset print, which was a monochrome picture of a snow-capped cottage. A copy of that is framed and signed by the dozen Presstek employees and dated September 1988 to record the event. By December, a four-colour image had been produced and in February 1989, the development press with its central impression design had been built and used to
produce the four-colour image.
It was the culmination of a dream that Bob Howard and Dick Williams had shared for many years. Mr Howard had invented the Centronics' dot matrix printer and moved on to found Howtech, a start up company aiming to build colour scanners more cheaply than the dominant prepress suppliers. While this scanner could capture and generate
digital data, the only way of getting that to output was via the film to plate to press route. What was needed was a press that used the dot matrix concept to take digital data from a computer and output it directly in colour. In 1987, Presstek was born to do just this.
OVERCOME
There were of course problems to overcome: mechanical handling systems would be needed; the electronics would have to handle digital data in a new way; there would need to be a new image carrier; the new printing plate; and not least software to hold this together.
The company was quick to file patents and now this intellectual property gives Presstek a source of enormous strength. This was tested recently when it came out the better in an encounter with Agfa. Nobody is saying but this must have been particularly sweet for Bob Verrando, an ex-Compugraphic and Agfa employee who has been tempted out of semi-retirement to become Presstek president. "I've known Presstek for years, trying to put deals together when I was at Agfa. I've also known Bob Howard for a long time and we talked about me joining Presstek, but I tried consultancy with Polaroid for a year until almost three years ago when we talked again and he made me an offer I couldn't refuse.
"Polaroid wanted me to join full time, but having been involved in big companies I didn't want to do that again. At Presstek, here was a company poised for exceptional growth."
Today, Presstek has an arsenal of 60 patents granted and another 25 pending as the company is applying its core technology in new areas.
The technology first developed was spark discharge where a spark of electricity could vaporise a coating on a plate. IBM had used this technology on a plotter, which could be used to make polyester plates, but it had not been successful in the market. Presstek had however, used it on the central impression machine it had built to test
the technology. The machine itself is cobbled together from any old press parts the engineers could lay their hands on. There are bits of Multigraphs, Ryobis and parts that were engineered locally or cannibalised from a number of other machines.
Within a year what Presstek was doing came to the attention of Heidelberg, most importantly Mr Pfizenmaier, a member of Heidelberg's main board. A deal was signed in January 1991 and the company was presented with a press to work on which resulted in Presstek delivering its first GTO-DI. It made its public debut at Print 91 in
Chicago and rapidly sold 30.
RELUCTANT
This was however an intermediate technology. Heidelberg was reluctant to show samples with text for the very good reason that nobody could accurately control where the electrical spark might strike the plate. "The press used an early form of FM screening, random screening which was acceptable for colour images but not for text because the placement of the dots was not precise enough," says Mr Verrando.
From the outset Presstek had planned to use lasers, but in 1989 a suitable laser cost $50,000, far too much for what the development team had in mind. However by Ipex '93 this had changed and lasers were used in what is still called the Pearl system. This time there was no question over the quality of text. Existing GTOs have been retrofitted with Pearl and the machine has continued to sell. If a Heidelberg customer wants five-colour printing, there is at present no alternative.
For four-colour printing there is of course the Quickmaster DI, first shown at Drupa 95 and which became the sensation of t heshow. Heidelberg took orders by the sackful, but mindful of the problems created when rushing the Speedmaster 74 into the marketplace, has held back shipments of the QM-DI. Now those blockages seem cleared and deliveries have begun in earnest. For Presstek, this means the shipment of some 300 imaging sets. Of the first 150, some 40 were installed in the US and resulted in two complaints.
Mr Verrando says, understating the obvious: "The QM-DI was one of the most important things to happen to Presstek. What is not understood is that the technology, and not only the imaging technology but also the plate changing cylinder, is Presstek
technology." The resemblance to the QM's skeletal grandfather is striking. Both are
central impression machines with the inking units arranged around the central drum.
Development for Heidelberg had begun using 24 wire discharge heads, even though
the laser system was being developed in parallel. When the QM-DI was launched in
May last year, the laser system was in place. Its launch caught the world totally by surprise, Xeikon and Indigo included. There is no question that it changed the framework, the paradigm to use the terminology of new technology.
DEMAND
Says Mr Verrando: "Presstek offers digitally based imaging for an on demand market place where important issues are the reduction of chemical waste and where printers are wanting to reduce their costs because of tight margins, and it offers offset litho
quality.
"We think that shows we are in a very good position looking at these factors - it's where the market really wants to go - it's almost a No Brainer."
Aside from developing the imaging head Presstek has had to overcome problems of placing this imaging head close to a printing press. Presses vibrate, their cylinders are not perfectly cylindrical and of there is a lot of dirt and grime flying about. It is a harsh environment to expect to achieve accurate imaging, which is no doubt one reason why nobody has yet managed to follow in Presstek's footsteps.
When fitting the imaging units to a press, other than the QM-DI, each printing unit has to be fingerprinted and the imaging unit adjusted to suit. The press is also apt to vibrate as parts of the machine operate. For instance, the oscillating rollers will move against the side frame causing microscopic, yet potentially significant movements. "The five-colour Omni-Adast was surprisingly easy to work with, easier than we'd thought," says Mr Verrando. "The press is a very reliable product for them, and they know it very well. It's better for this than some of the Adasts that have more advanced plate changing features."
The imaging head would be useless without a plate to expose, and this too is a Presstek development. The laser burns through a protective surface and image forming area to strike the ink receptive coating on the aluminium base. The plate in its present incarnation is good for at least 50,000 impressions and can hold very fine dots.
While this is as yet the only material that can be exposed by the Presstek diodes, other platesetters can expose the plate. Creo and Gerber have already worked with the plate and Gerber has announced joint development plans.
PROCESSED
Once imaged, the plate is processed, if that is the correct word, by wiping it with a plate wash solvent to remove any trace of the coating material. Even on a QM-DI with its fully automatic systems, a manual wipe before printing may be necessary when imaging dots smaller than 5%, however.
On a Pearlsetter, the clear protective coating is peeled away and the plate mounted on pins. After imaging the plate, with either an 8thou or 12thou calliper, it is removed and can be fed through a roller arrangement that Presstek has developed to handle the cleaning step. Because there is no chemical processing whatsoever, unlike other
thermal image plates, there is absolutely no degradation of the imaged dot. If it has been imaged square, then square it stays.
Production of these plates is at present divided among a number of factories and manufacturers across the US, but not for long. Last year, Presstek bought Catalina Coatings, a vacuum coatings specialist, after enquiring about the suitability of its equipment for coating aluminium printing plates. The technique is a simpler process
than the graining and anodising process used in conventional plate lines, and is if
anything faster.
Work has already begun on a new headquarters building for Presstek. This will eventually reach 250,000sq ft and will not only include the product manufacturing area, but also plate production. This is located on a greenfield site elsewhere in Hudson and will include power generating plant to reduce costs still further. The land Presstek
owns covers 66 acres. This gives ample room for further development. One feature that has been included is a green, fairway and tee area for a single hole to suit golf fanatic engineering vice president Frank Pervavecchia.
The plate line is in the first stage of the project and will begin operations in May in a 100,000sq ft facility. It will produce both aluminium plates and the polyester plates used by the Quickmaster. Products will be shipped by the end of next year. Then follows the construction of the administrative offices and finally the area for product manufacture in 1999.
OVERSUPPLY
With the world already facing an oversupply of plates, Presstek has to have some good reasons for adding to the capacity. It believes it has says, Mr Verrando. "We realise that the industry is going through a big change at the present. There are digital plates on the market, but they all require photochemical processing. This doesn't really make any sense, so there's an opportunity for a true digital plate.
"We have both wet and dry plates, though we know you can't make a market with a waterless plate and given the over capacity, using the same technologies as others have is not a good way to go."
The actual Catalina process is shrouded in secrecy, though the result is clear. Production speeds are up to 1,500ft/min, the line can coat to varying thicknesses, making it ideal for plate manufacture, particularly as the plate itself is improved. It will also allow Presstek to make a plate which can be produced at a great cost
advantage.
The effects of this will not be felt until the back end of next year. Already however, the company has attracted the attention of US speculators acting as if the company had discovered the Philosopher's Stone. The share price rocketed and then plummeted after directors cashed in a small portion of their holdings, prompting complaints and legal action. The company however exhibits the characteristics of start up technology led companies, even though unlike some, it is profitable and increasingly so.
In the first half of the current financial year, revenues rose to $22.8m ($10.6m) and pretax profit to $5.0m ($361,000). The faith that Mr Verrando placed in it when joining Presstek seems to be paying off. It might also allow Presstek to escape being linked in stockbrokers' minds with Indigo and Xeikon, companies whose shares have dipped on the New York Stock Exchange. Being more closely linked to conventional
printing technology and especially the association with Heidelberg, no doubt helps.
Now the challenge is to break free from the tag of being a development company into a strong profitable supplier of leading edge technology to a million printers across the world.
Further information
THE PRESSTEK FAMILY
HOW TO BUILD A LASER DIODE
Miller Freeman plc |
