There are currently a number of 2-color printing presses on the market; as someone who is currently printing on color copiers but looking to move into the press world to be able to print on gloss stock with traditional inks, which 2-color presses would be best to look at for runs of 1,000-1,500 11.5" x 17.5" process color pieces. Which 2-color presses have the registration to make process color work look great and allow runs of 1,000 to 1,500 to be accomplished the easiest running in two passes through the press?

Ask any pressman currently running a 4c press if they would go back to running process on their old 2c press? In an emergency, yes. Otherwise, no. Even if registration is spot on for the second run, not being able to see what you're getting until the second pass is a huge drawback printing anything color sensitive.

That's why there are 10x more two color presses on the market right now than four color presses.

Is printing process color on a 2-color press really that bad?

Now that I'm used to fiery rips and canon machines that auto gradiation adjust every 100 prints to remain absolutely spot on, I would say I could never go back to the much less "intelligent" laser machines I used before. But I still produced some pretty good work on those and it wasn't so bad at the time working with their little inconsistencies.

So going from digital color to process color on a 2-color press in two runs, would I be moving up or down? If you're printing your own work, so you know what is what going into the plates, is it really that difficult to come to terms with the press so you can get pretty darn process color results without any visual adjustments needed on press to get the process color qualities you want?

If you run 4 color on a 2 color press and simply shoot for consistent densities, then it shouldn't be too horrible. Be sure to take the time to run some tests and see which densities produce the color you want. I used to run 4 color on a 2 color Heidelberg MOZ-P and as long as I ran the colors at a consistent density the quality was pretty good.

Would this be true of the Heidelberg GTO 52-2 Also? Would there be major difficulties as regards registration in using this machine to do 4 colour work?

I use a Hamada 248e two color and as long as I have color bars at tail end, I can produce ALMOST original copy densities. Would I rather use a 4 color to prevent changes in paper do to less than pefect shop conditions? You bet!!

smikes? Then the issue boils down to budget...The horror stories that have been posted about the Heidelberg QM DI 46-4 series have scared me off that machine, but the price differential between the GTO 52-2 and GTO-52-4 (the various er..flavours?) is enough to give one pause.. For Postcards and brchures not requiring that much close registration/ Someone offered me a Hamada Star 2-colour ("Pick it up and go..!") but no experience with it.. opinion smikes? (as well as to the other stuff?

Don't mean to take this off-topic, but what horror stories about the QMDI 46-4 are you referring to? Can you elaborate? I know it's not as strong on heavy coverage as other presses, but I've seen some nice work produced on QMDI 46-4's too...

The Star I am not familiar with ,but the 248 we picked up and had to teach ourselves to run it. Little slow to set up compared to the small AB Dicks we run with colorheads, but reg stays on.Have problems with registration above 6000iph , but there are a few parts that need replacing, and since we had no formal training, there may be some stupid little adjustment we are missing.That being said, it is my first choice press for all gloss ,tight reg.and heavy solid jobs I run.

If possible to have current owner set up a test job on stock you use the most and rerun after the first pass to check registration, that would benefit you greatly.