The growing use of digital files in the prepress area has lead to its use elsewhere in the printing process. The Digital Ink Preset System (DIPS) represents an extraordinary advancement in an area of great potential savings - press makeready. The DIPS provides a convenient means of rapidly setting ink fountains. The standard that Printflow has chosen for digital preset interfaces is a print production format (PPF) called CIP 3. Various TIFF formats can be used as well. Acting as a translator between a work-station and the printing machine, the DIPS converts pre-press data into the pro-per digital format, converts them into the ink keys presetting information and passes them to the press remote control. This information enables the precise ink fountain pre-setting of a press. The result is less waste and a faster makeready.

• CIP 3 or TIFF input formats
• various press interfaces allow the communication with almost any modern press console
• the DIPS is very flexible; it can support several press lines at the same location using multiple press interfaces
• modular approach - an additional press interface can be obtained to support the new press line

• less makeready
• waste saving
• fast return on investment

Printflow´s Digital Ink Preset System consists of the CIP3 PPF/TIFF file reader - the InkZone software, and the DIPS Center.

The CIP3 PPF/TIFF file reader digitally scans the CIP3 or TIFF files to obtain image coverage data. The data is then passed to the DIPS Center for further processing.

The DIPS Center stores and processes image coverage data from a prepress area. By acting as a storage device, it allows jobs to be stored, used, recalled and moved at will. When the job is to be printed the image coverage data is converted to key preset values and is transferred to the press console to preset the fountains. The DIPS Center is very flexible and can support several press lines by using multiple press interfaces. The key zone information as well as the printing characteristics is calculated and stored for the press selected by an operator. Once a job has been run, it may be rerun on a different press if that is required by workflow considerations.

Many printers have made the move to CTP, but their operations are not yet 100% digital and may never be completely so. Printflow can now offer the solution for printers wishing to preset their printing machines from prepress files while simultaneously using the benefits of a plate scanning system. The Inkscan plate scanner can also serve as a DIPS Center and thus combine both the conventional and the new technologies. If possible jobs can be preset by using digital data from prepress; if not the ink coverage information from the plate scanner is used.

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