CIP3 Digital Workflow (I)

In the past few years, an important concept in the field of printing has gradually evolved from concept to reality. This idea is to unite and manage all aspects of printing. CIP3 (prepress, printing, and postpress) is the integration of prepress, printing, and postpress equipment to form an assembly line. It has taken a big step in the production of integrated printing.
Computer-integrated production (CIM) always reminds us of the huge number of impersonal robots in a huge factory. This is difficult to connect with the noisy printing industry. But it was CIP3 that brought us into the era of integrated production.
In fact, CIM is the development direction of the printing industry. In today's information society, integrated printing has become an unavoidable trend. The digital management system has penetrated into all aspects of the print production process, from scanner scanning pictures to cutting off the various parameters of the finished product. Therefore, it is not surprising that the integration of these systems has been made even higher. Because printing is also a production process that requires a large number of finished products.
The Importance of CIP3 For many years, computers have played a very important role in the printing production process. Digital technology can integrate multiple devices and manage them. In other words, using the specific requirements of India, it will be converted to the parameters used in the next few steps. For example, the printer's ink zone controls, crease position on the folder, and so on.
Setting the parameters on each machine for optimization and unified management is the original intention of developing CIP3.
CIP3 was initially developed by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany and Heidelberg. The promotion of CIP3 in the printing industry is an important part of the company's success. A total of 34 companies, including equipment manufacturers, software developers and users, are currently working on research and development of CIP3.
The CIP3 technology is mainly to provide a file format so that customers can use the data required by India for printing in different printing processes. This file format is called Print Production Format (PPF). Most of the time it is called CIP3 PPF.
For a print job, PPF uses the various data generated by the prepress system to generate the processing information needed for the subsequent process for unified management. In other words, from the prepress system, all the data from India is taken and used to guide the processing of equipment in other processes. For example, ink zone controls and various binding parameters are generated on the press.
Researchers developed PPF and compared it to many digital workflows. The main feeling is that PPF is compatible with the current standard, the Postscript language. As a computer programming language, Postscript has infinite charm because of its strong ease of use and scalability.
In general, a CIP3 file structure is described by a set of Postscript language commands. For example, a CIP3 file has two parts before and after. The first half includes the content to be printed, register lines, color control information and cutting information.
There are many other printed information in these Postscript language commands. For example, the data used to calculate the ink area size, folding information. There are other parameters. This information includes not only the specific parameters of the print job, the time of generation, the software used, but also how long it took for India to live in design, RIP interpretation, imposition, and output.
PPF also has many parameters to manage the print job in each process. For example, low-resolution pictures are previewed on the screen, and replaced with high-resolution pictures at the time of output; the positions of the register lines are described; the color and ink control data, and the like. All this information is described in Postscript language and stored in many different ways. A CIP3 file can be transferred, exchanged, and controlled by various devices that can interpret the Postscript language.
RIP manages picture data and conversion curves, and uses them to calculate 笮 (15) ∷ 11. ど璨 ask  蠹 蠹 ど璞 ど璞 璧 璧 璧     怯莳, can be easily printed out on the Postscript printer, the user will be very intuitive to see the progress of the print process in the entire process. (To be continued)