Di’s have it.

Western Web is excited (Yippie!) about our new Ryobi 3034 DI press.

This technology was developed in the 1990’s.  My good friend Art and I went to see the very first one made by Heidelberg unveiled during a trade show.  The press was secreted behind a huge, black drape, viewable by invitation only. The operators hung the blank plates, the press roared and whirred for thirty minutes and finally we all watched in amazement as it started spitting out the absolute worst print quality I have seen before or since.

“DI’s suck” I said to Art.

DI stands for Direct Imaging and it’s come a long way baby.  Our Ryobi DI has rolls of plates that hang themselves. The plates are imaged in the time it takes to soft boil an egg.  The press cleans the plates and blankets, sets the ink, washes your car, does the dishes and then spits out maybe 10 checking copies that look amazing.  The operator takes out the checking copy, says, “These look amazing” then keys in how many she wants and goes back to watching ESPN.

Of course we have terrifically skilled press operators and it takes one to run a DI press.  However our DI press allows us to do short or long runs on all types of paper, including gloss, with offset quality and affordability.

We bought the press to print gloss covers for magazines we print on the web press and hopefully land more magazine printing since we can produce them more affordably.  However, we can print posters, brochures, flyers, rack cards, miniature mechanical dogs that will fetch your paper and lots of other stuff.

Check out our web site to learn more about our new press.  It is very cool.