Although Heidelberg dominates the traditional offset commercial printing market, Xerox leads the fast-growing digital-production color segment with a market share of 55%.

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The traditional China engraved block printing technique requires the collaboration of half a dozen craftspeople possessed of printing expertise, dexterity and team spirit.

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Manufacturers can also produce experimental or customized products previously too expensive using traditional manufacturing methods. 3D printing now gives manufacturers this latitude.

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"What we're looking at doing is developing tech that bridges that gap between traditional manufacturing and 3-D printing, " Buford said.

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Sales of color-laser printers and multi-function devices that copy, print, scan and fax, have provided growth spurts, even as traditional black-and-white printing and copying shrinks.

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The combination of FDM 3D printing and printed electronics technologies can provide benefits over traditional prototyping, manufacturing and field repair processes.

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It has tried to shake off its rather traditional image in recent years, publishing a new weekend edition in 2005 and printing adverts on its front page for the first time in 2006.

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Publishers make very high gross margins on traditional textbooks, and since e-books radically reduce the cost of distribution and printing, one would expect prices to drop substantially for digital offerings.

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Then there are more existential threats, like a digital generation that favors 99-cent iPad apps over traditional toys, a shrinking number of toy stores and the looming concern that DIY 3-D printing will render premade plastic toys obsolete.

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