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Last week, we looked at the short-run market, where it is today, and where it's going. This week, we'll take a closer look at the technologies that enable profitable short-run work, and where each of them excels.

The Variable Digital Press Market

HP Indigo, Xerox iGen3, Xeikon, and the Kodak NexPress are the major examples of what can be considered truly digital "presses," as opposed to the category of machines known as high-end digital printers. They all use slightly different approaches, and all produce at least "near-offset" quality. Some would argue that the latest presses produce quality superior to offset (at least they often have a wider color gamut).

Suffice it to say the digital press offerings have come a long way in terms of quality, consistency, and reliability over the past few years.

The HP Indigo series uses static-charged ink and a single imaging drum to apply the image to the drum and transfer it to the sheet, making it the only ink-on-paper variable data digital press. Although it prints on a wide range of substrates, pre-treated paper is recommended.

The HP line includes the HP Indigo 3500, 5500, and 7000 (just released in June 2008) digital sheetfed presses, and the HP Indigo press w3250 and W7200 (not available until late 2009) digital Web presses. For label and packaging converters, there are ws4500 and WS6000 (available early 2009) models. And for plastic card printers, there is an s2000 model.

While Xerox produces a complete line printers in almost every price range that are capable of variable data printing, the iGen3 is the product most people think of when they talk about a Xerox digital press.

An iGen4 model was introduced at drupa with a 25-percent-plus boost in productivity, and a pricetag of $640 million. These toner-based presses can produce high volumes with an extremely high print quality. One advantage of the iGen family is the ability to mix several types of stock in one run.

Xeikon print engines from Punch Graphics are solidly built toner-based Web digital presses that can produce up to 3,000,000 pages a month with in-line perfecting.