InfoTrends CAP Ventures, which tabulates 40 billion 81/2x11" digital color production impressions will be made this year, forecasts a leap to 56.9 billion next year.

  Impressions that include color variable data will surge from 7 billion last year to 34   billion by 2009. About 15% of graphic arts firms say they plan to purchase a digital color press in the next 12 months, reports TrendWatch (www.trendwatchgraphicarts.com), which adds that 39% of existing digital printers are seeing volumes increase.

  Readying for this market, vendors at Print 05 showcased truly significant new color production platforms running 40 ppm or faster, perhaps stealing some thunder from conventional heavy iron in the process. Across the board, the new offerings lower the cost per page and offer process efficiencies through front-end software and back-end inline and near-line finishing. Before the show ended, Canon USA also joined the crowd, unveiling the imagePress digital color production platform at a New York City venue, and moving a step beyond the CLC line of digital copier/printers (see sidebar on p.30).

  At Print 05, Hewlett-Packard mounted its largest-ever printing show exhibit, dominating one of the show's three display floors. The 136-ppm web-fed HP Indigo w3250 4-color press can reach 272 ppm printing two colors. Now in beta and available in the spring at $750,000, it includes a priming unit that pre-coats substrates to enable printing on a wider variety of materials, particularly lightweight papers.

  Joe Bergeman, HP's Americas category manager, says customers such as yearbook/commercial printer Lifetouch Publishing, Eden Prairie, MN, are looking to offer lighter weight stocks. "We've also added upgrades to the digital front end and believe that our price per page on this machine is close to 3 cents with full four color," he says, citing a very compelling number.

  The upgraded sheetfed HP Indigo press 5000 includes accelerated monochrome printing to 16,000 A4 pph (266 ppm), gang stackers for unloading while printing, and a RIP expansion rack to extend processing capacity. In addition, HP and Kodak's newly formed Creo Print On Demand Solutions are pursuing an OEM relationship to create a product that will enable Brisque, Prinergy and Synapse workflows to drive Indigo presses. HP also plans to integrate its presses with Agfa's ApogeeX and Heidelberg's Prinect workflow systems - evidence of the technology's acceptance in commercial pressrooms. Other offerings include an HP Indigo 3D lenticular application powered by HumanEyes software, and Pageflex Storefront integration with Indigo Production Manager.

  Highly modular platform

  Kodak, which united exhibits to integrate Kodak Polychrome Graphics and Creo entities three months after acquiring the latter, showed the NexPress 2100 plus.

Available now (at the entry-level list of $349,000) the completely reconfigured press   forms a platform for the forthcoming NexPress 2500, its long-awaited 20" press (handling 14x201/2" sheets), set to challenge the Xerox iGen3. The 2100 plus will be upgradable to a faster 2500 when it arrives next year. An early 2100 plus install was reported at Lake County Press, Waukegan, IL.

  In a finishing first for NexPress, Kodak will offer the Watkiss BookletMaker for the 2100 plus and the 2500 as either an inline or offline set up (prior solutions were offline only). This bookletmaker permits a square-back stitched finisher, with imprintable spin, similar to a Xerox offering.

  The fifth imaging unit and scuff-protecting Nexglosser NexPress introduced at the On Demand show last spring, "are a huge success, especially for direct mail applications," says Chris Reece, Kodak product marketing manager.

  On the high-volume, high-speed front, Kodak's inkjet Versamark VX5000e printing system is now commercially available in the U.S. Featuring an effective resolution twice that of the previous generations of continuous inkjet printheads, the VX5000e delivers both higher print quality at 300x1200 dpi. Versamark marketing VP Ron Gilboa notes that the 5000e can be configured from 4/1 on up to 4/4. A hybrid version with Muller Martini's Concepta offset also was shown. "Monthly volume on this press is 3 million impressions and up," he says, with pricing "about 2 to 3 cents per page."

  Continued development

  Konica Minolta showed its bizhub PRO C500, a 50-ppm color and monochrome device with a rated monthly page volume of 150,000 pages, built on the core engine of predecessor 8050 and CF5001 models.

  The PRO C500 features 600x600-dpi resolution, easy color calibration and an enhanced version of the company's Simitri Color Polymerized Toner. It handles paper up to 13x19.2" for 12x18" full-bleed printing. The original IP-921 embedded Fiery Image Controller and IP-901 Fiery Image Controller have been joined since by EFI's MicroPress ProSeries 7.0 Production Print Workflow Solution (which couples printers) and, now, a Creo IC-301 image controller. Finishers include multi-position stapling, saddlestitching, bookletmaking, two- and three-hole punching, trimming and post-sheet insertion.

  Tandem printing systems

  Océ announced two new full-color tandem printing systems for handling up to 700,000 pages a month: the 64-ppm CPT 60 printing system driven by a double print engine configuration and the three-engine 96-ppm CPT 90.

  These use Océ's core Copy Press print technology, identical to that used in its CPS 900 digital color printers. Instead of overlaying toner colors, a charged cylinder attracts seven different toner color particles side by side in a direct process. The iron core toner needs no developer, and is fused with pressure rather than with heat as in most printers. This produces more consistent output on a variety of stocks, from lightweight to book covers, says Océ.

  A 1000C server from EFI resides in front of each Océ engine, while a central workstation provides load balancing across the full configuration. Available now, the CPT 60 lists for under $150,000; the CPT 90 for $220,000. "These are also two or three fully functional standalone devices," notes Guy Broadhurst, senior director of product marketing.

  The Océ VarioStream 9230 roll-fed printer brings 3/3 color capabilities to the 9000 family of high-speed printers. The 9230 represents the next stage for this platform by simultaneously supporting 1/1, 2/2 and 3/3 (black plus two colors, double sided), using Océ CustomTone highlight color. Next spring, the company expects to introduce 4/4 spot color capability and, within a year, CMYK and 5/5, or CMYK plus one CustomTone color. The 9230 is field upgradeable to these further color options.

  Debut of inkjet press

  An unexpected arrival at Print 05 was Screen USA's Truepress Jet520, a multitone inkjet device printing water-based pigment that achieves a color depth of four tones per drop (two-bit imaging) for each color. Its piezo Drop-On-Demand inkjet printheads are manufactured by Seiko Epson (denoted by an "Epson in Techrated" plaque on the press at the show). Production machines may be delivered by the fourth quarter in the U.S.

  The 20.4"-wide web press runs at 200 fpm, achieving a lateral resolution of 600 dpi and inline resolution of 300 dpi. Aimed squarely at the transactional market (and Versamark), the Jet520 can be set up for duplex printing in a tandem configuration or as a single-engine duplex running as a half web.

  Live job spotlight

  Xeikon, now part of Punch Graphix, printed live variable-data, direct-mail jobs on its flagship product, the roll-fed Xeikon 5000 introduced at drupa '04 in Germany. The application belongs to Portland, OR-based Expresscopy.com, which receives and prints up to 700 variable-data jobs every day. During the show, a portion of its daily orders were redirected to the 5000 on the floor for printing.

  The finishing and fulfillment was automated in one complete line that included two-sided UV coating, diecutting, stacking and batching.The production flow started with the X-800 Digital Front-End, which resides as a virtual printer on the Expresscopy.com network. Jobs were transferred over the network, and the U.S. Postal Service picked up the finished pieces from the show floor.

  Largest product portfolio

  Xerox, with the industry's largest digital color production portfolio (and the second largest booth at the show), showed products ranging from the 40-50 ppm DocuColor 240/250 debut (see page 52) to the 110-ppm iGen3. Fred DeBolt, VP of color product systems in Xerox's Production Systems Group, noted that Xerox's new FreeFlow DocuSP 5.0 color server includes a native, full-color IPDS (Intelligent Printer Data Stream) printing option on the iGen3 and the DocuColors 7000 and 8000. IPDS processes transactional documents such as checks, invoices and statements, documents for which Xerox sees full color as a growing trend.

  Finishing on demand

  On-demand finishing applications represent one of the fastest-growing sectors of print, and finishing options have exploded for this segment. In addition to his August pre-show report on finishing, GAM FinishLine editor Don Piontek mentioned two more items he saw:

  Duplo showed its SCC (Slit/Cut/Crease) near-line bookletmaking system, which is designed specifically for digital-print output. The SCC solves two main problems encountered in digital finishing: it creases the cover and inner sheets of a booklet, solving toner "cracking" when folding digitally printed booklet sheets. And its software drives the printer to place a register mark, which a CCD camera uses to guide its three-sided trim unit, correcting for "image drift" occurring in the digital print process.
Muller Martini showed its Amigo Digital Binder in the Xerox booth. It was part of a complex "on-demand" high-quality inline binding system. A Xerox 1050 continuous forms printer fed a Hunkeler cutter and MBO buckle folder. Folded sigs were transferred to a Palomedes stacker, which delivered book blocks (via a special Shuttleworth conveyor) to the Amigo Digital Binder, tower unit and three-knife trimmer, resulting in a high-quality, perfect-bound Grilling Recipes book.

  Big New Player

  H P, Kodak, Xeikon and Xerox may now face added competition in high- speed digital color print for commercial runs.

  Just as the quadrennial Print 05 show drew to a close in mid-September in Chicago, imaging giant Canon was making waves at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City at its own expo, which it holds only once every five years. There, dealers, distributors, analysts and the media saw the launch of the imagePress brand, an entire line of digital output devices geared to commercial printers.

  "The imagePress line expands our superior value proposition to commercial print and graphic arts customers," boasts Tod Pike, senior VP of Canon's Imaging Systems Group. Customer deliveries are about a year away, he adds.

  While some CLC 5100 and 5000 owners may upgrade to the new product, the imagePress line is not a replacement product but a way to enter and capture new markets, notes Rich Reamer, Canon's senior manager of product marketing, Graphic Arts. The flagship line, a 70-ppm system code-named imagePress "X" set to launch next year, was shown running with an EFI Fiery front end producing such essentials as saddlestitched booklets output from documents originating as a mix of digital files and analog originals.

  An imagePress "Y" system may replace the CLC 1100 series of color copiers for short-run, color-critical markets.