A Brief History of Digital Printing

Digital printing may sound like an up-and-coming commercial printing technique, but it has actually been around for almost 20 years. Since its inception in the early 1990s, digital printing has become an economical and efficient way to print all sorts of projects, especially short-run jobs or those that require a lot of customization.

The Birth of Digital Printing

Digital printing was developed after personal computers became a fixture in many American homes. In the early 1990s, computer and photocopying companies developed a new way of printing that allowed projects to be printed directly from a file on a computer.

Due to its versatility, the market for digital printing took off in the late 1990s. Digital printing is now expected to compete for nearly 20 percent of the commercial printing market by 2016.

How Digital Printing Works

Unlike traditional printing presses, which use plates to create a master copy of a printing project and use that to recreate many, identical copies, digital printing recreates an image of the file every time it prints. Digital printers take a computer file and translate the data from that file directly to the press and onto the page using electricity. Digital printers often use toner or dyes rather than ink.

The Benefits of Digital Printing

Digital printing is a versatile and economical choice for many printing projects, including print marketing campaigns that are tailored to recipients. Since digital printing does not require plates, it is easy to run projects with variable data and economical to run shorter jobs up to 10,000 copies.

Digital printers can be connected to a computer network, which allows Twin Cities printers to run a printing project at the touch of a button. This makes it easy for clients to email a file to their favorite printer with instructions, have the printer run the project and pick up the end result.

Digital printing is a cost-effective printing option for Twin Cities businesses. If you’d like see how digital printing could make your short-run printing projects more economical, call Matreks Printing today at 952-746-4010.

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Matreks Printing
Adam Johnston
8317 Pillsbury Ave So
Bloomington, MN 55420

Go Green with Commercial Digital Printing

Many Twin Cities businesses are turning to environmentally-conscious options to fulfill their business needs. While print marketing remains an important way to stay in touch with clients, there are ways to reduce the impact printing has on the environment. One way to do this is to go green with digital printing at Matreks.

What Is Commercial Digital Printing?

Digital printing uses positive and negative charges in the printer’s drum and toner cartridge to transfer a digital image onto the paper. In the digital printing process, the printer does not need to create a master copy from which all other copies are made. Instead, each copy is a “first-run” copy of the original, digital file. For this reason, digital printing is a great choice for businesses with project that involve changing information on each individual copy, like a batch of monthly invoices. Digital printing is an economical choice for short-run projects up to 1,000 copies.

How Is Commercial Digital Printing Green?

Digital printing not only saves money, it also helps save the environment. Since digital printing does not require a minimum amount of copies to make the project cost-effective, businesses are able to print only what they need, reducing waste.

Another major benefit of digital printing is that it uses toner, not ink. Toner is a dry powder used to copy an image, while ink is liquid. The process for making the materials for toner is incredibly efficient. The resin that accounts for 80 percent of the toner powder is made in a lab with 97 percent of materials contributing to the final product, reducing waste.

Other toner materials can be reused in other industries or are the by-products of other industries. For example, magnetite, the iron oxide that carries the electric charges in a toner cartridge, creates a by-product, sodium hydroxide, which can be used by other industries instead of being thrown away. Paraffin, a by-product of the coal and oil-refining industry, is also used in the toner manufacturing process and helps reduce waste.

Since some chemicals used in the toner production process can be harmful, all digital printers are encouraged to recycle their cartridges so they do not sit in America’s landfills.

Digital printing is a cost-effective printing option for Twin Cities businesses that saves paper, time and the environment. If your business would like to go green with its printing needs, call Matreks Printing today at 952-746-4010.