Digital Process and Management Status and Development Trends

Digital process and management is a hot issue in the current printing industry. Many internationally renowned printing equipment suppliers have conducted research in this area and related products have appeared. At the Drupa 2000 exhibition, digital process and management became one of the major features and propaganda themes of this exhibition. Some people even called 2000 the year of digital process. It can be predicted that the digital process and management will inevitably be an important development direction in the future printing process control.

Digital process and management are inevitable for the development of digital platemaking and printing technology


First, digital processes and management are the need for the printing industry to fully enter the digital age. Digitalization first started with the prepress, and it was the fastest growing. At present, the pre-press field has completely adopted the digital production process, replacing the traditional electronic color separation, manual imposition, so that the production cycle, quality and effectiveness have been overall improved. In the printing stage, many new models of presses have digital adjustment functions, such as ink volume adjustment and control, overprint adjustment, and automatic printing, which have been widely used on imported equipment. In terms of post-press processing, although the start was relatively late, various manufacturers are also working hard in this direction, and products with digital control functions have been developed, including some cutting and binding machines.


Secondly, in order to increase production efficiency and automation of equipment, printing equipment manufactured by many equipment manufacturers has increased the functions of automatic control, but most of them are self-contained closed systems, and the printing industry urgently needs to have uniform standards. Users can work in an open environment.


Third, the need for digital and networked data transfer is also a driving force for the development of digital process management. With the arrival of the information age, the amount of information has rapidly expanded, the spatial distance has become smaller and smaller, and the means of information transmission has increased. This has led to tremendous changes in the printing industry. In order to meet the needs of information delivery and keep up with the pace of information updates, the printing industry has to reduce intermediate links and increase production efficiency to meet users' time requirements. The only solution that can solve this contradiction is to use digital processes and management.


It can be said that in the era of information technology, under the trend of digital production methods and the urgent need of the printing industry, printing equipment manufacturers must develop their products in an open and intensive direction, which leads to the digital process. Birth.

What is a digital process


The digitalization process consists of two levels, one is the transmission of page data flow, and the other is the transfer of page control flow. Page data flow refers to the page information produced, such as graphics, image data, text data, etc. This is the main object of the printing and copying; the page control process mainly includes the management information of the page, such as the page size, color, cutting, folding Page, binding and other control parameters, this is the control and management information of the entire production process, the control object is the page data. In the traditional printing process, the control flow of the page is done manually, such as through orders and subpena. However, in a digital workflow, the control flow can be completely digital and automatically completed by the machine.




At present, the digital process has the following forms:


a. Digital flow of stand-alone operation;


b. Digital flow based web server;


c.CIP3 digital process;


d. Remote networked digital processes.


These digital processes are gradually formed with the development of digitization, and will continue to coexist for a period of time. The digital flow of a single-machine job is the most primitive form of digital flow. It is basically a flow that contains only pre-press data such as page data information, and has only a few page information settings. The data flow of a stand-alone job is shown in Figure 1.




Figure 1 Standalone job data flow


When using a stand-alone job, all the work of a job is completed on a single machine. All image and text data in the job must be stored on this machine, and the output is also directly output by the machine. If several machines are required to work together, all necessary data must be copied to each machine separately. In this way, data will repeatedly occupy the resources of each machine, and mutual transmission will also reduce work efficiency. Therefore, this kind of work flow is only suitable for use with less work tasks and small scale.


Web server-based digital processes are suitable for larger scale and multi-machine joint operations. The biggest difference from the stand-alone mode of work

Yes, this process consists of a file server to save and manage files, and servers and workstations are connected via the network, as shown in Figure 2.

Show. The input image and text data is no longer stored on each machine, but is stored directly on the file server. operation

The workstation calls the required files from the server and remains on the server after the production is complete.


Because the digital flow based on web server must transfer data frequently in the network, and the data volume of the image file is often very large, so the pressure on the network is large, which will affect the work efficiency in serious cases, so it is usually necessary to use OPI or DCS technology to reduce The transmission pressure of the network.


There is no essential difference between a web server-based job flow and a stand-alone job, but the data transfer mode and data flow are different. They basically have no page control flow and therefore are not strictly digitized processes.

The CIP3 digital process is a data flow standard developed in recent years. Its purpose is to separate prepress and prepress.

Print and post-press processing processes are closely linked to form a complete digital process management, which is also the CIP3 digital process

The advantages over the previous two process forms.


CIP3 is InternationalCooperationforIntegrationofPrepress,Press,and

The abbreviation of Postpress, an international cooperation organization composed of printing equipment manufacturers, software developers and printing research institutions. The purpose of the organization’s work is to establish a common data format that more closely links the printing and post-printing process with the prepress process. The various data generated by the prepress process can be received and translated at each step of the subsequent process in order to apply these control data to printing and postpress production. The benefits of doing so are: save time, stabilize and ensure the quality of printed products.




Figure 2 Digital flow based on web server




Figure 3 CIP3 Digital Process




Figure 4 Remote Networked Digital Process


CIP3 uses the PPF (Print Production Format) format as the file format for the data control process. The PPF file contains page information, printing, and post-press processing information in order to control the processing machine. The CIP3 digitization process is shown in Figure 3. When adopting the CIP3 digitization process, information and processing requirements for the page and the entire task are saved in the PPF file, including the page number, size, trimming, binding, color, ink, and Task management and all other control information. This information is used by the PPF file interpreter to generate control codes for various devices and to control various devices to process according to the requirements of the PPF file.


The long-term networked digital flow is a brand new production method that has emerged with the development of the Internet in recent years. It is a combination of several digital processes and remote network technologies. In this workflow, data flow and control flow are no longer limited to transmission within the LAN, but can be delivered globally. The application of remote networked digital processes can break the geographical restrictions of traditional printing and save a lot of transportation costs and time. The schematic diagram of remote networked digital flow is shown in Figure 4.


The use of networked digital processes can achieve globalization of publishing and printing. Publishers, prepress centers, and printing houses can be in different regions or countries. The same publication can be published simultaneously in different languages ​​in different countries. During the production process, the CIP3 digitalization process can be used to save information such as page information, layout, plate number, color, trimming, binding, etc. in the PPF file, and print consistency can be ensured regardless of where it is printed.

The advantages of CIP3


The biggest beneficiary of the establishment of the CIP3 standard should be the equipment manufacturer, which can make all kinds of equipment produced by different manufacturers compatible and mutually complementary, thereby generating greater benefits.


The advantages of using the CIP3 digitization process can be summarized as:


● Simplify the process flow, increase the degree of automation, replace more manual operations, and reduce the requirements for operators.


● Shorten production time and preparation time. Since the preset settings for production are saved in the PPF file, the parameter adjustment can be directly performed by the machine, reducing manual adjustment time, especially for short-run printing needs.


●Reduce the waste of raw materials. While reducing the setup and preparation time, the material waste during the adjustment is reduced, and the production cost is reduced. For example, the original adjusted ink setting requires several hundred sheets of pre-printed paper, and the use of the printer's pre-inking function can reduce the number of overprinted sheets to less than 50 sheets.


● Improve product reliability and consistency. Since the parameters of the production process are stored in the PPF file, it can be ensured that the quality of the products processed at different times and regions is consistent, which virtually increases the stability of the printed product quality.


● Improve product quality and reduce errors.


Therefore, the integrated benefits of using the CIP3 digitization process are to increase production efficiency and reduce costs.

Digital Process Development


The basic idea of ​​the digital process was put forward at the end of 1993. At the beginning of 1995, 15 companies jointly established the CIP3 cooperation organization, and at the 1995 Drupa exhibition, the original PPF file format version was proposed. Since then, the CIP3 digitization process has continued to grow and improve. More and more devices have adopted the CIP3 standard. The number of cooperative members has also increased continuously. Now it has reached more than 40 members. In order to reflect the new stage of digital process development, during the Drupa 2000 exhibition, the CIP3 organization was renamed CIP4 (International Cooperation for Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press, and Postpress) and a new file format was defined - JDF (Job Definition Format) To replace the original PPF format. The functionality of the JDF file format has been further strengthened, especially considering the needs of end users in the remote digitalization process.


At present, the digitalization process is still constantly developing and improving, and its superiority is being recognized by more and more people. I believe that in the next few years, there will be greater development in digital processes and management, and more devices will support the new standards.

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