Correct choice of variable data printing solutions (below)

These software companies and major equipment manufacturers form a series of alliances and partnerships, such as IBM, Océ, Xerox, HP lndigo, Canon, Ricoh, Xeikon, VersaMark, NexPress, Manroland, and Epson. Most software vendors support open standards through PPML 1, but they also support other formats such as VIPP, VPS, FreeForm, PrintStreamer, PDF, Postscript, and XML.

With so much software available on the market, users need to determine which features are more important to them. You need to consider how the software integrates with the original back-end systems and legacy databases, and whether it provides easy-to-use tools for creating variable documents.

Only after examining each package in detail can you choose the best solution. Successful VDP software must be able to define variable text or image units, specify personalization fields in data fields, and organize variable content into text and image catalogs. In addition, you must also be able to set conditional logic to determine the printed form and location of different object text and image elements in the database; you must be able to create printed documents that contain both static and variable elements.

Printing Equipment

The quality of digital printing is now very high. For non-professionals, few people can see the difference between digitally printed and offset prints. Typical high-end digital printers print fast, print on different substrates, process VDPs, support double-sided printing with resolutions up to 600 dpi, and many provide finishing solutions. Therefore, such high-speed devices can support large-volume variable data printing tasks.

The common four-color digital printing equipment that supports high-speed production at present is: Xer0x's DOCuColor iGen3 has a speed of 100 pages per minute, a resolution of 600 dpi×600 dpi, and Xerox DocuSP and Creo Spire high-performance RIP. The speed of Xer0x DOCuC0l0r 6060 reaches 60 pages/minute and supports 75 to 1 35 g/m. The paper and paper tray capacity is 8,000 pages and supports three RIPs, Xer0x DOCuSP, Cre0 Spire and EFI EXP6000.

The Nexpress 21 00 has a speed of 70 pages per minute and can be printed on a variety of substrates. With the NexStation PDF/PJTF front end, NexPress supports up to 10% of variable data printing. Océ, known for producing high-speed black-and-white digital presses, also has a seven-color digital press CPS700 with a speed of 25 pages per minute, supporting simple or complex modes, and printing on RIP sides. Despite having a resolution of only 300 dpi, the VersaMark Vantage of Kodak Versamark (Santa Angel Digital) has a speed of up to 708 sheets per minute and is a high-speed variable-data printer. HP Indigo has six- and seven-color digital presses with a resolution of up to 800 dpi and a production speed of 52 pages per minute.

Xeikon's new Xeikon 5000-type color digital presses have a speed of up to 130 sheets per minute (A4), use web feeds, and have a monthly print load of more than 3 million pages. They are also suitable for printing variable data prints.

Some small digital presses produced by Canon, Epson, Konica, HP, Toshiba and Ricoh can also be used for variable data printing, and can handle large batches of live jobs if multiple networks are used.

Since there are many types and models of digital presses, printers must choose according to their own needs. In addition to paying attention to the price of the machine, it is also necessary to consider the variable number printing software and RIP that digital presses support.

Bright prospects

Almost all digital printer manufacturers now realize the potential of variable data printing and are committed to developing this market. Variable data printing requires that printers choose and quickly master and apply digital printing equipment and software, as well as database technology, direct marketing methods, and customers' customers. Therefore, implementation of variable data printing will not be easy and you will encounter This kind of difficulty, however, the huge returns from investing in variable data printing projects are sufficient to compensate for the efforts made during this process.