2) 1980's
When entering the 1980's, the economy became rich and work
opportunities increased. Since the job as a press operator held
unwelcoming factors such as filthy, strict and dangerous, the occupation
was given a cold shoulder by the young laborers. For this reason, not only
increasing productivity but also development of technologies and
facilities to eradicate dirty work and physical work became important an
important theme. The 1980's were a decade in which remote control using
electronics technologies, development of technologies for the automation
of various adjustment tasks and the installation were started.
In the beginning of the 1980's, a press that remotely controls
adjustment mechanisms that are gathered in one operation center with
values obtained from various places as the standard was announced and then
gradually disseminated. This technology open the door from press that were
controlled with a conventional workman's feel to press that were
automated.
Although an ink preset system that adjusts the ink reservoir before
printing by reading in the image surface area of the plate surface was
released in the first half of the 1980's, its accuracy was not sufficient.
However, the split-blade method worked well with the remote control
system. The ink preset system was able to combine its own improvements
with various automation devices to improve productivity.
With the realization of ink adjustments and register adjustments that
simplified the work procedure in the field that heavily influenced the
print quality, more attention was given to detailed problem solving
concerning printing work.
The blanket cleaning work was demanded
automation to reduce the time machines needed to be stopped and the time
required for preparation, as well as to eradicate dirty work. For
large-sized machines, this device was widely spread as a standard option
in the first half of the 1980's.
Spray powder for preventing set offs
required long experience for adjustment and there were many problems
concerning set offs. In addition, [draining work] was indispensable, with
much labor load and also prevented print speed from
increasing.
Although the JR ink was introduced in 1979 to solve this
problem, it never became popular. The method of coating water-based
emulsion inline on the paper surface became popular in some areas, most
companies decided to wait on the development of an automatic drainage
board insertion mechanism.
Although a print quality error detection
device was released in the first half of the 1980's, it never became
popular since the paper position was never stable on sheet-fed press,
enabling sufficient detection accuracy. The situation is still the same at
the present. On the other hand, this was not the case for web machines and
starting with newspaper wheeling machines, the device also made its way
through to commercial offset machines.
During the mid 80's, various devices to reduce work time and labor work
for the above in addition to remote control were widely used. This made
possible for even four-color press to be operated by two persons and the
preparation time took only about 30 minutes.
In the latter half of the 1980's, an automatic print plate changer was
developed and in addition to the range of register adjustment that can be
remote controlled, paper pressure for changes in paper and adjustment work
for the paper supplying device and feeder were also made remote
controlled. Although all this made drastic reduction in the preparation
time, machines with all these options were very expensive.
Although the
shipping price for a flat-plate sheet-fed press in Japan from a
manufacturer was 7.7 million yen in 1980, this figure became 14.4 million
in 1985 and 35.2 million in 1990. Although the price of a press doubling
in 5 years can be said due to the increase in multi-color press, much of
it lies in the various options for automation.
3) 1990's
In the 1990's, much of the forefront technologies of the 1980's had
disseminated and at the point of 1999, attaching an automatic plate
changer became normal. It was not rare to even see an ink preset device or
an automatic register adjustment mechanism.
A full-sized, four-color
sheet-fed press was able to be operated by one personnel and the
preparation time only took 15 minutes. Furthermore, a high print speed
standard (actual speed) of 9000 sheets was realized.
When entering the latter half of 1990, digital press and print systems
that utilized new image format mechanisms such as DICO WEB and Elcography
had surfaced. In the field of color printing along with the many CTP
system introduced, a system that allows prepress directly on the press for
printing had been developed. Keywords were filmless and variable data
printing. These were technologies to correspond to the segmentation of
demands as the economy matured, and the changes in the individual
information needs and marketing procedures.
Although much of the new
technologies will be assessed upon entering the 21st century, the result
concerning the system that is an extension of past technology of using
physically locked plates for copying information has started to show
results.
For example, companies with CTP and CIP3 systems report
changes in the working hours for their full-sized, five-color press
(number of personnel: 1.5) as shown in Fig. 6
Fig.6 Improvement of productivity by introducing CTP and
CIP3
|
|
|
|
| Preparation work |
No. APS,CTP,CIP3 |
APS+CTP |
APS+CTP+CIP3 |
| Plate replacement |
8 |
4 |
4 |
| Registration |
5 |
1 |
1 |
| Tone adjustment |
10 |
10 |
4 |
| Garbage removal, etc |
5 |
1 |
1 |
| Total |
28 |
16 |
10 |
Even for the company mentioned earlier for examples of its productivity
has installed the CTP system in February 1999 and the CIP3 installed as
well in September. For the operator of the press, the company is
considering not to use an experienced press operator, but a worker in the
prepress department. This is the realization of complete simplification of
printing work.
Digital printing systems with variable data are not extensions of the
past press, but perhaps the technology for phase transition from the
concept of printing.
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