by Digital printing technology has evolved drastically over the past few decades. In the 1970s and 80s, early forms of digital printing such as dot matrix printers emerged but produced low-quality output. By the 1990s, higher resolution laser and inkjet printers became available for home and office use. However, these were still not suitable for high-volume commercial printing needs.
The true revolution began in the late 1990s and early 2000s as digital inkjet and toner-based printing technologies advanced. Rather than using impact dot matrix heads, these “non-impact” printers put ink or toner directly on the page through inkjets or toner fusing. Resolution rapidly increased into the 600-2400 dpi range, allowing sharp text and high-fidelity graphics. Print speeds also climbed into commercial production ranges.
Continuous Inkjet Printing
One of the earliest and most established Digital Printing methods is continuous inkjet printing. It uses a continuous stream of ink droplets that are electrostatically charged and deflected onto the substrate. It is commonly used for industrial printing applications like coding, marking, and labeling products. Continuous inkjet printers provide high speeds of over 1000 feet per minute and can print text and graphics on various materials like paper, metal, and plastic. Their main applications are printing variable data like expiration dates, lot codes, and addresses directly onto products and packaging moving along a production line.
Digital Presses
Around the early 2000s, dedicated digital printing presses intended for commercial offset printing workloads started to emerge. Unlike multifunction printers, these were optimized for high-volume transactional and commercial printing applications. Popular digital press technologies include toner-based machines that work similarly to laser printers but at production speeds and widths. Inkjet presses use piezo inkjet heads to spray liquid or UV-curable inks directly onto substrates.
Digital Printing match or exceed the quality of offset presses. Some models deliver resolution up to 2400 x 1200 dpi on a wide range of paper stocks. Print speeds range from 150 to over 1500 impressions per hour, depending on the number of marking engines or print bars. Another advantage they have over offset is on-demand printing capabilities with no minimum order quantities. This makes them well-suited for personalized, customized, and short-run print jobs.
Digital vs Traditional Printing
There are several key differences between digital and traditional printing methods that give digital certain advantages:
– Shorter Run Lengths – Digital printing is highly economical for shorter print jobs under 1000 copies, while traditional offset presses have higher setup costs and are best for 5000+ copies.
– Customization – Digital printers can easily handle variable data and personalized printing by changing elements like text, images, or colors on each printed piece. Traditional printing struggles with high-volume customization.
– Production Time – There is no plate-making process with digital, allowing jobs to be submitted, proofed, approved and printed within hours instead of days.
– Waste Reduction – Sheetfed offset wasted pre-press materials, unused prints, and paper trim but digital waste is negligible with on-demand, print-on-demand capabilities.
– Material Versatility – Digital can print on envelopes, labels, shrink sleeves, glass, metal, and 3D objects while offset requires plates/blankets tailored to paper.
– Remote Printing – Digital jobs require no transport to an offsite printer and can be produced anywhere there is an internet-connected printer or digital device.
The diversity of digital printing applications continues increasing across industries:
– Marketing Collateral – Brochures, flyers, proposals, direct mailers, postcards, catalogs are all commonly printed digitally for personalized campaigns.
– Publishing – Mass customization of publications like magazines, books, and manuals through variable content/finishing is enabled using digital on demand technologies.
– Packaging – Food/beverage cartons, folding cartons, labels, corrugated boxes benefit from the design flexibility and print-on-demand of digital to enable promotions, versions, compliance, and inventory management.
– Textiles – Garments, fabrics, home furnishings are digitally printed with photo-realistic quality using wide-format inkjet for quick turnarounds on fashion/decor products.
– 3D Printing – Combining 2D informational printing with the object itself using multicolor inkjet or toner fusing, like annotated prototypes or serialized final parts.
With continuing technological advancements, its methods will likely dominate the market and become the standard production process across most commercial segments. Its responsiveness, sustainability, and application breadth make digital printing a compelling future for on-demand communications.
*Note:
1. Source: Coherent Market Insights, Public sources, Desk research
2. We have leveraged AI tools to mine information and compile it.
