If you’ve been in the printing industry for any period of time you know the smell. It’s a distinct mix of solvent, paper dust, and oil that hits you the second you walk onto the production floor. For years, that smell was the scent of money. It was the scent of hard work.
Skilled pressmen have ink permanently etched into their cuticles. They spend hours loading paper, scrubbing rollers and hoisting aluminum plates. We take pride in it.
Today, our plant floor looks less like a factory and more like a laboratory. The shift to embrace digital printing platforms, alongside analog ones, hasn’t just changed how we print; it has fundamentally changed the quality of life for everyone on the floor. Modern offset presses have also improved by leaps and bounds, leading to an overall cleaner production space.
Discover how digital printing Is changing the print industry and why the digital revolution is a breath of fresh air—literally and figuratively.
The Cleanliness Factor: White Gloves vs. Solvent Rags
In the analog days, cleanliness was a constant battle. You had open ink fountains, blankets that needed manual scrubbing, and buckets of waste ink. A “clean” press operator was just someone who hadn’t started their shift yet.
Digital printing platforms have completely flipped the script on plant hygiene.
- Sealed Systems: Modern digital presses—whether inkjet or toner presses—keep the consumables contained. There are no open fountains dripping cyan onto the floor. The ink or toner comes in sealed canisters or cartridges.
- No More Toxic Wash-Ups: We aren’t using harsh volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to strip ink off rollers at the end of every shift. The digital maintenance cycle is largely automated and chemical-free.
- A “Customer-Ready” Showroom: Our production floor is now a place we can walk a client through without worrying they’ll slip on an oil slick or get dust on their suit.
The result? A workspace that feels healthier. The air is cleaner, the floors are spotless, and the clutter of rags and chemical drums is greatly reduced.
Ease of Operation: Brains Over Brawn
Remember the physical toll of a long offset make-ready? You were climbing up and down the press, wrenching on bolts to adjust tension, and physically moving heavy stacks of paper to get the feeder just right. It was skilled labor, but it was also exhausting labor.
Digital platforms have shifted the burden from our backs to our brains.
- The “Make-Ready” is virtually zero
On a traditional press, switching from one job to another could take an hour of setup—hanging plates, getting up to color, and registering the image. On a digital press, it is often as simple as loading the file and hitting “Start.” This reduces operator fatigue significantly. We aren’t fighting the machine; we are driving it.
- Automated Color Control
Remember chasing color? Tweaking the keys, running 500 sheets, checking with a loupe, and doing it again? Digital presses use inline spectrophotometers to calibrate color automatically. The machine keeps itself consistent, meaning the operator can focus on quality assurance rather than constant manual adjustment.
- Intuitive Interfaces
The new generation of presses runs on software that looks familiar to anyone with a smartphone. Training a new employee used to take years of apprenticeship; now, a bright operator can master the basics of a digital interface in weeks. It empowers our team to feel successful faster, without the frustration of a steep mechanical learning curve.
The Bottom Line for the Employee: How Digital Printing is Changing the Print Industry
There is a tangible morale boost that comes from working in a clean, high-tech environment. When you clock out and don’t smell like chemicals, you like your job a lot better.
Digital printing didn’t kill the craft; it elevated it. It takes some of the mess out of the equation and left us with the best part: creating beautiful, precise print for our customers.
This isn’t to say that offset printing doesn’t have a place in a print shop today. We still operate a hybrid UV/LED 40” Komori litho press today. That press is loaded with all of the digital tools to make life easier for our operators. It’s UV/LED reduces the need for spray powder, leading to a cleaner and healthier working environment for our team. We look forward to the continued advancement of all print production methods and the modernization of print plants everywhere!