Digital People

Blue Printing Company

blue and the reason why the HP Indigo 3050 was right for business productivity

Who Are Blue?
The Blue Printing Company is a family owned printers operating from a production base in East London, with their own in-house production facilities for most printing requirements. Now in its 5th year of operation they have been fortunate to see the company grow consistently during what for many in the industry has been a period of economic downturn.

Who do Blue serve?
The client base is very diverse, ranging from banking and financial institutions to supermarkets, cosmetics manufacturers, soft drinks companies, petro-chemical giants, international and national advertising agencies. One thing however, that all of these companies have in common is the need for quality, both in product and service.

The aim?
To achieve sustainable growth by offering an excellent level of service across a wide range of printed products whilst maintaining our competitive edge on pricing.

Blue’s range of products!
From leaflets and flyers to financial reports, bound books, direct mail and point of sale products we have the facilities in house to offer one of the widest ranges of print related products available without the need of external assistance.

Blue Printing Companies services include:
Reprographic

Litho Printing

Digital Printing

Finishing & mailing

 

Making the Choice
The decision to move into Digital Printing was not taken lightly, many high end copier solutions were evaluated but Blue decided the issues with cracking toner during finishing would pose a problem, the only solution was a liquid ink digital press.

Paul Mursell, Managing Director of Blue said “We knew that we required digital to complement our Litho services. The copier technologies were not good enough quality and only had a lifespan of 3 years before they needed replacing, we needed a liquid ink digital press. Our clients expect quality and as a ISO 9001/2000 company, I would not be happy sending out a job that is not up to scratch.

We seriously looked at the HP1050 Indigo Press but decided to bite the bullet and purchase an HP3050 Indigo Press due to the throughput being twice the HP1050. At under £200k for a new seven colour HP3050 machine it was affordable and the quality was superb. The installation took three days, the training was five days and conducted on our site and on our own Indigo ensuring no expensive training cost.

The Digital People have a great team, the training enabled Blue to be really comfortable with the machine.

 

How is HP Indigo technology able to match Litho for quality?
Today, the HP Indigo Digital Offset Colour printing process is the only variable imaging printing technology that can equal or exceed the quality, colour range and substrate compatibility of conventional offset lithographic printing.
Though some xerographic processes can produce high gloss toner images, they cannot match the gloss of the substrate surface, thereby producing high "gloss contrast"- which is perceived as poor quality. HP’s liquid ElectroInk uses oil to bind and distribute its pigment-carrying particles, which are about one micron in size, and consequently capable of creating much finer detail and thinner printed ink films. Xerographic presses require multiple printing units. Single sided models have four printing units, one per colour, and double-sided presses have eight printing units - four on each side of the paper path. Therefore an important consideration when making comparisons between these and the single unit HP Indigo presses is simplicity. HP’s colour switching technology enables single station printing presses, which results in compact presses, less parts to maintain, lower potential for things to go wrong, and a more accurate colour registration. Ultimately, the key issues for organizations investing in digital colour printing center on quality, speed, cost per page, versatility and product range. HP’s technology places it as a leading contender in all these respects. So, the customer has choices to make: if the customer requires offset quality, the choice is between mechanical offset printing and HP Digital Offset Colour printing. If the customer requires digital printing, the choice is between xerographic-quality digital printing, HP’s offset-quality digital printing. However, if the customer requires digital printing of offset quality, there is only one choice: HP Digital Offset Colour printing.

Dealing with dot gain
Dot gain - the tendency for printed dots and lines to spread out and enlarge as the ink image passes through the pressure of transfer - is consistent and predictable on HP Indigo Digital Offset Colour presses. HP Indigo presses have built-in dot gain compensation which corrects the exposed dot size so that it prints to the desired size. In addition, HP Indigo presses automatically adjust the optical density (i.e. appearance in terms of lightness or darkness) and dot size so that they always appear the same, copy after copy. With a conventional offset lithographic press, there are wider fluctuations during a run caused by factors that include: fluctuating ink and water temperature; water/ink balance and their tendency to emulsify; plate and blanket wear; and atmospheric humidity altering the absorbency of the paper. Neither automatic nor manual adjustment can completely iron these out, because there is always a time lag between the problem appearing and the adjustment taking effect, during which many copies are printed. With HP Indigo presses there are fewer operating variables, and the optical density of the printed image can be electronically set by the operator within a wide operational range. Once set, a proprietary closed loop mechanism, called Colour Adjust, regulates and monitors the print density and the dot size in real time throughout the job run. Just as importantly, Colour Adjust will remember the adjustments for repeat runs in future, meaning that a repeat job will be identical to the original - this is difficult to achieve with lithography which depends to a great extent on operator skill.

Digital People: 0845 130 1445
Blue Printing Company: 020 8986 5555