appointments  drupa 
The first comment obviously is that drupa was a success. This was in terms of numbers of attendees. There were less visitors than in the year 2000, but more than the organisers predicted. The lower numbers are interesting to consider. There were, without doubt, much fewer printers from Germany, the core printing market in Europe. Perhaps business pressures prevented the print workers from coming, leaving only the owners and managers of these companies to visit. There were, I am advised, more visitors from the Eastern Europe and the Far East. While that is good for the exhibitors, as it showed the potential of increased sales in these areas, it is perhaps not good for the Western European printers. Lower operating costs in these areas may pull more print work away from Western European producers in future as the technologies used there improve. The big push before drupa was all about JDF, and almost every supplier of digital prepress, press and post-press systems was announcing they would be JDF enabled. The drupa organisers announced that drupa 2004 would be JDF drupa. I disagreed with this and I think I was correct. Visitors did not come to buy JDF, because they did not really know what it was. JDF is not something a printer buys. It is a data format capability that allows different systems from a range of suppliers to communicate with each other and pass messages on status between each other. For a printer, if JDF works well and is fully tested, it means it is feasible to buy systems from a number of suppliers, to build an integrated workflow. If anything, this was a workflow drupa, where printers realised that digital workflow was the key to their future. JDF is just an enabling technology for this.

However, I have to say that JDF was well demonstrated at drupa. Whether this was in the somewhat closed confines of Heidelberg’s Prinect presentations, where most of the systems were from Heidelberg, or the open fields of PrintCity or NGP, it showed that JDF is soon to become a key element in future systems. The message therefore from drupa was to make sure whatever systems, presses or post press equipment you purchase, they are both JDF enabled and JDF certified. It is a very necessary component in the move of printing to work effectively in a computer integrated manufacturing environment.

I do have a concern that most suppliers’ and printers’ ideas of workflow are constrained to the printer’s factory. Few systems I saw really had good links upstream into the client’s operations. There were some good approaches, such as Creo’s Synapse, to provide input and proofing links into the client’s operations. The only workflow approach I saw that went further than this was Esko-Graphics’ Scope, which linked right back into the client’s creative and planning processes. It was interesting to see a number of Esko-Graphics major packaging customers brought their own customers to the show to see how they could all be part of a totally integrated business approach. This is surely the future approach all printers will have to adopt. In other words, link into your client’s workflow, rather than expect them to link into your workflow.

Digital prepress
In this review I am not going to talk about presses. There are people who know this better than I do who can comment on this. In the digital prepress areas however I saw some interesting trends. The first of these is in CTP for offset. I think we have reached a watershed in the position of violet diode based visible light imaging, and that of thermal imaging. The first thing now is that there is only one form of visible light imaging, this being the violet diode laser. Technologically this is moving ahead at a tremendous speed, while thermal imaging is stagnating. When we saw the start of the violet diode CTP in 2000 there were few diodes, and those could only output at very low power of 5mW. At drupa 2004 most units have 60mW diodes, and one had 100mW. This increase in power allows a whole different range of plates to be imaged. In 2000 we had one, perhaps two plates, both being silver based. In 2004 we have the same silver plates, but also a range of photopolymer plates that are more the plates printers want. These include plates from Agfa, Fuji and Lastra. By GraphExpo, in October, there will probably be three more suppliers at least, including KPG. By early 2005 laser diodes will be available with power well in excess of 100mW and by the end of 2005 probably up to 300mW. Why is this so important? Firstly the more power you have the easier it is to image a plate, and to image it in high-quality at high-speed. Secondly with 300mW we will almost certainly have process free violet-based plates.

In thermal CTP, the imaging heads do not benefit from the technology advancements that are happening with violet diodes. Violet diodes are used in mass-market applications of DVD readers and recorders, so they are made in huge volume at low prices. They are very reliable. The infra-red diodes used in thermal CTP are not mass market. The reason for this, one can say, is that diodes are corrupted to image at the 830nm wavelength. To make such diodes it is necessary to add extra zinc into the mix as most infra-red diodes used in communications operate above 900nm. Adding zinc to the mix lowers the wavelength but also reduces reliability. Almost all thermal plates historically are sensitised to work at 830nm, as the dyes for this are more efficient at that wavelength. This is a decision made by Kodak in the early 1990s when they developed the first thermal plate. The results of this are the costs of making thermal imaging heads for CTP are not coming down, and their reliability is not improving at the rate of violet diodes. Today violet devices are cheaper than thermal devices, and in most cases are also faster.

drupa 2004 was to have been the market release for process-free plates. These were predicted to revive the flagging thermal imaging market in the two-page and four-page areas. I am afraid that apart from plates from Presstek, process-free had an almost zero impact. The plates are not really ready, and the ones shown were slower in imaging and cost a lot more. Fujifilm, a supplier of both violet and thermal CTP and plates, showed that it cost around €1.50 (AUD$2.70) per sqm in terms of additional service costs to image a thermal plate compared with a violet plate. This showed any benefit in using thermal process-free would be lost in additional costs. Looking ahead I predict that by 2008, violet diode based CTP will be the largest selling technology, and thermal will be limited to specific markets where it has defined benefits.

There is much more I could write, but space prevents that. Overall, drupa 2004 has to be seen as a success, and that the printing industry is starting to look at new investment. Let us hope it continues at the next major event in October at GraphExpo in Chicago.