The eight-unit press: not so fast

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, May, 1990 by Jeff Parnau

Jeff Parnau is president of PGI, a Milwaukee-area magazine production facility, and a developer of printing and publication software. He is the author of Desktop Publisbing, The Awful Truth and FOLIO:'s Handbook of Magazine Production.

Yes, It's quick. And yes, it lets you print 32 pages in full color all at once. But unless your pressrun is big enough, the eight-unit press may not be for you

What? What's not fast about an eight-unit, standard-size, full-color magazine press? Aren't they the speediest presses the industry has ever seen? Sure. Some of them are running in excess of 50,000 impressions per hour. But not so fast, magazine publisher: Eight units aren't for everyone.

Eight-unit fundamentals

The nice thing about the new eight-unit webs is that they allow you to print 32 pages in full color, all at once-quick. For a magazine with a high print order and the need for color on all pages, such presses are requirements, not options.

But those blinding speeds can become liabilities, too. What if you have a print quantity of 50,000? Your job would be on press just one hour-after the makeready, that is. The makeready putting the plates on press and getting the first good copy) might take two hours, or longer. That's the hitch.

How printers market presses

Magazine printers don't really sell printing. They market printing presses. The key word: Market.

For example, one smallish printer I know markets his full-size, six-unit web presses in the 20,000 to 50,000 range. He chose 50,000 as the "top" of his market because, as it happens, several competitors use 50,000 as the bottom of their range. The competition offers eight-units (and nothing less).

The magazine print purchaser who is unfamiliar with presses might automatically assume that the eight-unit press would be more efficient for producing full-color magazines. That is not necessarily the case. If it were, my smallish-size friend would be out of business. Take a look:

Virtually all printers have variable running rates. For jobs of 50,000, the rate per thousand impressions might be $20. But for jobs with a pressrun of a million, the printer might drop that rate on the same press) down to $13 (or less).

So, suppose you have a pressrun of 50,000, and you have the preconceived notion that 32 pages of color is more economical on an eight-unit press. Multiply 50,000 times $20 per thousand, and you have a total manufacturing cost of $ 1,000. But now you must add the eight-unit makeready. Let's call it $2,000. The total for 32 pages of four-color: $3,000.

Now, take the same job and run it as two 16-page signatures in full-color on a four-unit (or six-unit) press. But remember, we're now at the most efficient pricing at our smallish printing friend. if his run rate is $14, the two 16-pagers would total at $1,400. Now add two makereadies at $800 each. The total is $3,000. In other words, in this hypothetical example, these two printers "cross markets" at 50,000 impressions.

Now take that same example and do a couple of experiments. Take the quantity down to 40,000, and then up to one million. You'll find that (1) the "big" printer may not want the job at 40,000, and (2) the "little" printer will be horribly expensive in attempting to run a million.

Why would the "big" guy turn down work? It doesn't fit his market. The presses, the crews and the plant have what you might call an "efficiency window, " which might start at 50,000. The printer may not even know what he'd charge if he dipped below the magic number. Or, he might offer certain penalties to buyers to allow the 40,000 run on his 50,000 (minimum) press.

Many buyers are aware of their printer's run-length window. "Real" minimums for the eight-unit press may be well above the 50,000 figure mentioned here. One plant I'm aware of won't look at runs of less than 200,000. Many others tag 100,000 as the minimum run for eight-units. And some go down to 50,000, or slightly less (although I rarely see that).

Another significant reason eight-unit printers set limits on the low" end has to do with the type of makeready the printer uses.

In the old days, makereadies were always a slow, tedious process. The press was run at "makeready" speed, which might be a quarter or a half of its ability. But with the newer, high-speed presses, a new kind of makeready developed-the run-speed makeready. With color sensors, automatic registration, plate scanners, and a roomful of other electronic goodies, plus the question of heat, it became obvious to some printers that (1) makereadies could be performed with little human intervention at higher speeds, and (2) a slow-speed makeready would not necessarily prepare the press for a high-speed run.

Why? Take heat, for example. A press running slowly doesn't generate as much heat as a press running full-tilt. That can affect how the ink transfers to the paper, how it registers, and hundreds of other subtle characteristics.

So, suppose your printer does high-speed makereadies, and each takes nearly an hour. First of all, not everything gets tossed into the trash during that hour. If it's pretty good," it gets saved-first for bindery makeready, and second for user copies (as opposed to the ones that will be shipped to your office). If the pressrun is 500,000 and the makeready produces 50,000 "not quite perfect" copies-well, that's the way it goes.