Screen’s Equios will be able to drive one or more KM digital presses
A hybrid workflow that combines Screen’s Equios prepress and production management software with Konica Minolta’s digital presses is being developed through a collaboration between the two companies.
The joint initiative, which is part of a long-standing cooperation between the two, according to Charles Lissenburg at Konica Minolta Europe, is intended to increase productivity and ease-of-use in mixed offset and digital printing sites where production may require either output of offset plates for litho print via a Screen CTP device or direct to toner-based or inkjet digital Accurio presses from Konica Minolta.
Output for litho print will be handled as normal from Screen’s Equios prepress workflow, with imposition, trapping and colour management handled within that system; for output to KM presses, PDFs are sent from Equios to the KM digital front-end (DFE), together with JDF data; further colour management can be performed in the DFE for digital output as necessary. The DFE returns JMF data to Equios for production monitoring and management purposes. On-the-fly re-routing of jobs from offset to digital output (or vice-versa) will be possible, increasing the flexibility and productivity of the printer’s set-up.
Implementation and integration of the hybrid workflows will be handled at customer sites by both Screen and KM engineers. According to Mr Lissenburg, KM is also proceeding with similar integration ventures with other CTP-based workflow developers such as Agfa, Kodak and Heidelberg.
