Impressions - Asides on offset and digital dialogue

May 2008 - Posts

• Further Fuji news shows the inkjet challenge is bigger than B2

  Last week Fujifilm revealed its B2 digital inkjet sheetfed machine the Jet Press 720, a story, which on the eve of Drupa has attracted a lot of interest.   Shortly after it released news of the machine, which was developed by subsidiary Fuji Xerox, another Fujifilm company released a further tidbit that promises further inkjet innovation at Drupa that is possibly even more significant.   Dimatix, the firms inkjet printhead division revealed that its Samba print array, which is used in the Jet Press 720, could be used for press formats of 4-up, 8-up and beyond. Its parent has already played its hand with the 4-up (B2) version, so the bets are on now for who will be the first supplier with a B1 or bigger version.   Several well-connected sources tell me that there will be launches at the show of offset challenging inkjet presses. I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t multiple suppliers showing inkjet machine in offset litho formats of at least 8-up based on several different inkjet technologies.   Dimatix’s announcement that its technology can go B1 and beyond has not only raised interest in who will release what in those formats but also increased interest in what can be expected from rival print head technology suppliers for those bigger formats. While HP has already revealed its own wide web, the details of how Xaar and its technology partners will rise to the challenge in this space will be glimpsed in a couple of days.   I’m intrigued to see how Xerox will respond. The Jet Press 720 is after all developed by Fuji Xerox, as was the continuous feed 490/980 digital colour web, which Xerox sells in Europe. The firm has up to now remained cold on inkjet as a technology, although back in January it did promise a sneaky peek of something at Drupa and has been hurriedly inviting journalists to its stand in the first day before its main press conference.   But back to Dimatix’s Samba. That the technology exists and has been tipped as suitable for formats bigger than its parent’s press suggests that there will be sheetfed inkjet machines from at least one historically heavy metal supplier as well as from digital players that have hitherto been in the distinct sectors of small format toner, high-speed continuous feed and wide-format inkjet.   There will be a period of flux as suppliers battle to understand what unfamiliar sectors want, and printers get to grips with what suppliers they may previously never come across can deliver.   While it will be exciting to see all these developments at the show, the thing that is more important to bear in mind is how these products will enable printers to solve print buyers problems while improving their profitability.   The most important thing to do before the show isn’t to gen up on what will be in Dusseldorf but what is needed in factories from Dundee to Dulverton to make print a powerful and profitable medium, and then seeing if anything being hyped in the halls of the Messe meets those needs. Posted May 27 2008, 05:22 AM by Barney Cox with 1 comment(s)

• At Drupa digital begins the battle for B2

  What are the typical gripes about digital print from commercial printers? It’s only up to SRA3, inkjet machines can’t run coated papers and the quality isn’t there. Well blow me away Fuji Xerox has pre-announced a B2 sheetfed inkjet machine, which will be unveiled on Thursday at Drupa. It runs coated stock at 1,200 dpi. The firm’s press release isn’t clear on the speed – it might be 180 sheets per minute or 180 A4 pages per minute. So it’s either a decent for digital 2,700 B2 sheets per hour or a giving Heidelberg et al a headache speed of 10,800 B2 sheets per hour. HP has already broken cover with its Inkjet Web Press, which can churn out 14,640 B2 sheets or 7,126 B1 sheets per hour and is a serious challenge to sheetfed offset. There are heavy hints and subtle signs from other suppliers that they too will release similar machines at the show, which promise to transform the market with previously unheard of levels of speed, quality, cost-effectiveness and format flexibility. If I was going to the show to buy, I’d keep my chequebook locked up until I’d thoroughly checked out all the new digital alternatives and satisfied myself that my need was pressing enough not to be able to eke out my current kit and sustainable enough to pay back the finance on anything shiny and new before these beasts become widely available. These larger format B2 machines will have an impact on the economics of print on demand and personalisation, making some items that were previously out of reach achievable. But before getting too carried away I know that it’s all very well having the press, but ultimately it’s pointless if post-press and pre-press can’t keep up. There are developments that promise to make many of the problems in pre-press go away. The one area where there has been little evidence of the innovation needed is post-press. I can only hope the finishing guys are keeping some really big piles of powder dry. Posted May 22 2008, 10:34 AM by Barney Cox with no comments

• Colour is coming of age

  Recent developments suggest that what was once the final bastion of craftsmanship, colour, is finally falling to standardisation and automation. The big suppliers are all upping the ante in colour control and management whether it’s the press suppliers fitting closed loop controls inside their presses, digital press vendors paying attention to the software that drives their machines or the pre-press firms packaging up the colour bits of the workflow as standalone modules. It all means that there is a huge amount of light being shone onto a topic that was until recently still very much a black art. Last week I learnt something about the ISO 12647 colour standard that turned the tables on my understanding of it, and made what I thought was a very good thing into an excellent thing. I’d been led to believe by an expert early on, when interest in the standard was modest, that it wasn’t based on absolute colorimetric measurements, so was open to wide interpretation. Last week a savvier specialist updated my understanding and appreciation by informing me it is colorimetrically defined and therefore much more of a true standard. That was the equivalent of a high powered beam illuminating something previously murky to me. Everything I’ve seen about the benefits of defined and controlled colour suggest that the time, money and materials savings for printers and buyers alike mean that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Posted May 19 2008, 04:28 AM by Barney Cox with no comments