Why use special paper?
It is possible to get pretty much any paper from one end of a digital press to the other and produce an image on it. But will that image look as it’s supposed to? Will the image be permanent? Will the image flake off when the paper’s folded? Will it chip off when the paper’s guillotined? One or more of those things may happen. To get a fully guaranteed product, one you can rely upon, you need digital paper. Also, digital presses are not very happy to work with paper that’s not cut properly, and things like paper dust and debris are quite troublesome if they become embedded in a digital press.
Early days
As soon as digital printers capable of producing four-colour work came to market in the early 1990s, designers and other specifiers wanted to use the whole gamut of paper ranges that were available to offset printers.
The challenge for paper manufacturers was that the technologies were completely different to conventional offset processes. When HP Indigo talk about their ‘ElectroInk’, it’s actually toner dispersed within a fine oil, a completely different type of ink. The relationship between electro-ink and the paper surface was then unknown, paper manufacturers had to look at the possibility to develop surface chemistries, surface technologies and surface treatments to make the paper suitable for Indigo presses.
At the same time dry toner presses were emerging (such as Xerox, for instance with their now fully developed iGen4 digital presses) and paper requirements were very different there. With an Indigo the surface energy characteristics were important; for Xerographic type printing there were the electrical properties of the paper and the ability of the paper to withstand high temperatures.
What does digital mean for paper?
Though digital paper is a growing percentage of the market, we are seeing a fundamental change in the demand for printing matter. Over the past ten years there have been significant amounts of paper production taken out of the system. Commodity grades of paper for offset litho have suffered in the past few years. Many of the European mills have shut down. The ones likely to survive and prosper are those who have a more diverse product range, who make papers for new technologies, and who drive the creative side of the printing market.
Where is digital printing going?
We see now the digital market emerging from what was a relatively small format market into the more mainstream, bigger-format market with B2 (50×70cm) and even bigger presses. We’re also seeing digital printers used to print the kind of display work (with UV inks) that might previously have been screenprinted.
The potential of inkjet printing technologies to emerge and become mainstream is now a reality with high-speed inkjet presses currently used by the big mailing companies to produce transactional, variable-data documents using a technology that is totally different to that of Indigo or Xerox.
Digital changes everything
It is now possible for anyone to become a digital printer. Not necessarily a printer of the quality of Screaming Colour, but it is possible to purchase a press and with very little experience produce reasonably good quality commercial print quickly without going through the older processes, where you would need to employ a whole series of people to do different jobs. So totally new companies are springing up that don’t have a background in print production, or paper-buying, who have been enabled by digital printing technology to begin a new business in that way.