Prinergy 5.0

[dj]

It's supposed to work with JDF printers.

http://www.prepresspilgrim.com/index.php/archive/prinergy-50/

Now, has anybody ever seen a JDF printer. Can somebody point me to any links that explain what a JDF printer is and how are suppose to connect to it.

I've been hearing about JDF for about 7 years. Can somebody enlighten me?

thannnnnnnksssss.

[rrobinson]

Ugh - more changes! Upgrading to Prinergy 4 soon and we'll already be behind... good times!

[born2print]

Funny, dj.
I was just on eCentral a few hours ago, and a conference call last Friday w/ Creo-dak reps and I've never heard of v5!

JDF is "cool"
that's all you need to know! back to work! :laugh:

[Laurens]

Some of the front-end systems of offset presses can use JMF to send feedback about the current press status (running or not,...), the job that is being printed, the speed of the press and other stuff that is useful for either a prepress or an MIS system. I have no idea if digital presses offer similar features but I'll ask around, now that you got me curious about this.

[dj]

Well, if somebody is going to Drupa, it would be great to get snaps of Prinergy5 and then I can post them to my blog.

Or find out if that press release was completely bogus.

cheers, DJ

[Mark]

Hi there!

As already posted in the comments section here:
http://www.prepresspilgrim.com/index.php/archive/prinergy-50/

The Kodak NexPress familiy (M700, 2100, 2100 plus, 2500 and S3000) to the list of digital printers that support JDF.

Furthermore I think it's also important to support JMF otherwise it will be a one way street (of course the NexPress familiy supports JMF as well).
For a roughly explanation of JMF look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_messaging_format

JMF is actually closing the loop in a JDF workflow. Without JMF you would only have half of the benefits.

Of course the workflow systems needs to support JDF *and* JMF.

Anyone knowing of workflows systems that support JDF *and* JMF?


Cheers,
Mark

[Marktonk]

Hi Mark,

You stated:

JMF is actually closing the loop in a JDF workflow. Without JMF you would only have half of the benefits.

Of course the workflow systems needs to support JDF *and* JMF.

Anyone knowing of workflows systems that support JDF *and* JMF?





I do not know if you are aware, Heidelberg is one of the founding fathers of JDF. Our Prinect Printready system was designed and programmed with JDF at its core, it was not just JDF enabled. So we have been working with JDF/JMF for about 4 years and have learned much on JDF implementation. Over this time we have expanded JDF and worklfow to our Signa Station imposition, our Prinance estimating, MetaDimension renderer, Remote Access, the worlds first JDF Pressroom Manager, Integration Manager, Digital Print Manager with interfaces to NexPress, HP, Xerox and Canon for a common workflow and at Drupa, the Postpress Manager. I probably forgot a few.

Here is what we can do today. Prinance will generate the estimate. The estimate JDF includes the stripping parameters as part of it. The JDF is sent to Printready and if a template already exist, it can be automatically populated with pages or they can be manually populated. If a template does not exist, Signa Station is automatically launched in the background, reads the JDF stripping parameters and automatically generates the templates or the operator can have it stop along the way for oks. The workflow sequence can be set up to make proofs, imposed proofs or plates. As each milestone is completed, it is reported back to the master JDF via JMF (Job Messaging Format). A job can also be sent to one of the digital print engines via Digital Print Manager and if supported by the digital printer, a JMF can be sent back to be include into the master JDF as another milestone.

           So far so good. Here is where it gets real unique. I am sure you are familiar with setting up workflow sequences to automate the processes such as normalize, color manage, trap, impose then proof. Second sequence would be to continue on to plates. This pretty much encompasses prepress. What if you workflow sequence did not stop in prepress, the next sequence was the press. What could you do for a press? While ink zone setting have been set up digitally for a long time now. But if you notice, it usually was based on one ink/paper printing characteristics. This was usually setup at the press factory on the press console and then tweak for the clients condition. This works ok but once you change inks or paper, you may require a different printing characteristic curve. This typically was not there so the press operator would start adjusting the keys to get color where he needed it. You may start with presettings getting you there 70% of the way and the operator took over. We allow for unlimited ink/paper combinations, so each can be set up differently and stored. So lets go back to Prinance. Part of the estimate was the type, weight and size of paper to be used along with the inks. This is written into the JDF. It carries on into Printready and is part of the job. When the plates are done and the press operator is hanging them, he calls up a job. This job contains the paper type, weight and size of paper to be used along with the inks. So based on the paper type and ink combination, the proper printing characteristic curve is loaded into the press to preset the ink keys. We typically find this to provide more accurate setup and you would be in the 90 percentile for color.... less tweaking save time and provides a faster makeready! We even offer software that hails from our color scanner days called Color Assistant. This resides on the press console. If an operator tweaks a run, the printing characteristic curve can be altered and stored. As you run more of the ink/paper combination, if you see a trend in color moves, you can alter the curve so the next time the ink/paper combination is used, the newer, more accurate curve will be used. If the press is equipped with our Preset Feeder Plus, data is sent to automatically set the feed head set, side joggers for the paper, gripper height at in-feed, side guide, air setting on feeder, printing pressure, rear and side delivery guides and spray powder length. A bit more then just ink key presets. Ok, so the press is now part of the workflow sequence and has more efficient makeready. But what is next? With Prinect Pressroom Manager, using the same cockpit we use for Printready, you have a transparent window into the press production. You can see how many sheets makready took, you can see how many good sheets have been produced, you can see maintenance times such as wash up and how much time this all took. All of this is gathered and sent back to the Pressroom Manager and written into the JDF master.

   How about a reprint job? All of these setting are retrievable and will then be reset to where you ended the job. Of coarse some factors have to still be taken into consideration such as blanket wear but just think how close you are with the reprints being set up digitally.

Another feature we offer for the CP 2000 press console is Plate On Demand. The CP 2000 has a touchtone screen. With Plate On Demand, a press operator has the opportunity to call up a plate remake right from their console. This is handy if press runs multiple shifts and prepress in only one. Just leave on the workflow and CtP. The press operator even sees a thumbnail of the flat and can select one color or multiple colors.

There is more with Postpress Manager being the next expansion of our system. We do not consider workflow to stop at the platesetter, we consider workflow to be the whole production process and that is the goal Heidelberg set back when we helped co found JDF. Stay tune, even more to come at Drupa.

By the way, here is a link to an article Andy Tribute wrote on workflow and integration for Whattheythink.com and Seybold.

http://www.us.heidelberg.com/www/html/en/content/articles/prinect/whatisworkflow?contentid=309035



Regards,

Mark

[Mark]

Hi Mark,

thank you for the pretty impressive insight to Prinect Printready.
Although I was aware of a lot of features you mentioned some for me are new and interesting.
Used to work with the people who invented that and now - after the split-up - just working a few miles away from them  :-)

I did not want to mention Prinect Printready (or any other workflow system) because I wanted to leave it for the 'real' workflow guys like you.

Anyone care to add another workflow system or digital printing machine to this topic?


Cheers,
Mark