Commentary & Analysis
Digital Printing at drupa – Part 1
By Andrew Tribute
Published: May 23, 2012
Looking back over what appears to be a very successful drupa one can see all the new announcements in both analog and digital printing and hopefully can put them into context. There is no doubt that digital printing took most of the printing limelight at the show and that in terms of generating attention offset was a minor player. I am sure however if one looks at the show in terms of value of orders taken that offset will have taken the larger share as companies invest after delaying orders for some as they see investment is necessary to remain competitive in their markets.
In the digital printing area there were a number of different trends to be seen.
The well-established toner based sheet fed presses are reaching a level of maturity where progress is slowing up. We saw some speed improvements, such as the Xerox iGen 150 and Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C1100, and we may be getting to close to the full speed such dry toner presses using ground or chemically grown toners can achieve. What we are likely to see in the future with these presses is increased functionality, such as the longer sheet sizes as shown on the Xerox iGen4 EXP and the Kodak Nexpress Platform, and extra functionality through extra printing stations, again as seen on the Kodak Nexpress Platform.
Liquid toner presses move forward in functionality and speed. This was seen with the launch of the new HP Indigo Series 3 platform as shown with the HP Indigo 10000, 20000 and 30000 presses. These new presses have an increased imaging width of nearly 30 inches (75 cm). This width is easier to achieve with liquid toner than with dry toner. This extra width allows for larger sheet sizes increasing productivity and adding increased flexibility. It also allows for a reel fed press for the flexible packaging market to challenge flexo printing, and also a single sided press for the folding carton market.
Also in the liquid toner press area we saw three new developments that take electrophotographic press into a totally new business area that maintains liquid toner’s high quality, but then adds the speed of fast inkjet printing. These use a different approach to that used in HP Indigo’s presses and allows for potentially at least a 400% increase in speed. The presses we saw came from Océ, Miyakoshi/Ryobi and Xeikon.
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