Inkjet & Digital Printing

Total Printing Systems to Go Deeper in the Black with Screen Truepress Jet520EX-Monochrome

Tuesday 28. January 2014 - Total Printing Systems, a pioneer in the use of the web-fed inkjet platform for book manufacturing, is enhancing its lineup of high-quality, high-speed production inkjet presses with the addition of the Screen Truepress Jet520EX-Monochrome. The black-only inkjet web press joins a four-color Truepress Jet520 installed at the Newton, Ill.-based firm at the end of 2008. The new press will increase printing efficiency and bring higher tone reproducibility to monochrome book projects.

“After we installed the Truepress Jet520, our full-color book printing grew from fewer than 1 million impressions per month to almost 10 million impressions per month,” said Rick Lindemann, vice president of operations. “In addition to the growing number of color pages, we print 30 million black-and-white impressions monthly.”
Installing its first black-and-white inkjet web press in 2001 and a second black-and-white model in 2005, Total Printing Systems has seen black-and-white volume continue to grow. Much of the monochrome volume is still produced on an older, lower-resolution inkjet web from another manufacturer. This work will be transitioned over to the new Screen press.
“The Truepress Jet520EX-Monochrome will allow us to produce higher print resolution on all of our text pages while freeing up the Truepress Jet520 to concentrate on color interiors so we can capture additional business opportunities,” Lindemann said.
Lindemann’s parents, Richard and Wendy, founded Total Printing Systems in 1973. The Lindemanns initially specialized in general commercial printing but soon turned their attention to governmental publications. Text pages were run on Didde web presses, then collated and bound.
Today, Total Printing Systems specializes in religious materials, educational texts, children’s books, directories and general book work. It focuses mainly on short-run to medium-run books in the range of 50 to 5,000 copies, some containing variable content. The manufacturing plant operates two coldset offset web presses, a small-format sheetfed press and various digital imaging devices. Adhesive case binding, mechanical binding, perfect binding and saddle-stitching are among the finishing options from which customers can choose.
Total Printing Systems was an early adopter of black-and-white digital printing for short-run and just-in-time book production. The Truepress Jet520EX-Monochrome expands what the printer can provide its publisher clients. Screen offers the Truepress Jet520 series in four models, each targeted toward different speeds and applications. The flagship Truepress Jet520ZZ achieves print speeds up to 721 feet per minute.
Featuring technology and mechanisms from the Truepress Jet520, the Truepress Jet520EX-Monochrome boasts exceptional printing accuracy and registration precision. The Truepress Jet520EX-Monochrome has 20 printheads mounted in a single-pass multiple-head array. The heads can print a four-level grayscale at 2 bits per spot with a 4 picoliter drop size. The multi-drop technology is able to generate extremely smooth gradations.
The Truepress Jet520EX-Monochrome prints at up to 420 feet per minute on coated and uncoated stock, inkjet paper and standard paper, and has a maximum output resolution of 720 dpi x 360 dpi. The dual-engine duplex model chosen by Total Printing Systems prints both sides of the 20.4-inch paper roll at once. A built-in quality control scanner facilitates automatic correction to ensure consistent output.
“The Truepress Jet520EX-Monochrome produces very strong black-and-white images at the highest rated speed, which will attract more high-end, black-only printing jobs,” Lindemann said. “Not many black-and-white inkjet web presses on the market have the image quality we desired. We certainly looked at all of them. Few compared to the Truepress in terms of the combination of image quality and overall value. There was no benefit in switching to a device from a different press manufacturer.”