Page 25 - Print 21 Magazine Sep-Oct 2020

Digital
result in a 30 per cent upswing in productivity, which is a serious amount of extra capacity.”
Filip Weymans, vice-president marketing at Xeikon says, “Everyone talks about Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things. What they mean are connected digitised workflows and processes. Xeikon is already there, with our cloud-enabled, end- to-end print solutions.”
Pivot with Rex
As Covid turns the world upside down, many print businesses are looking at new options. Digital print, of course, is primary among those for traditional analogue
print houses. In these days when the cash isn’t flowing as freely as it once was, the investment in a new Xeikon may be above what some are willing to consider to enter digital print. Xeikon has a solution: Rex, its remanufactured press programme.
Weymans says, “Rex will enable printers to enter digital and progressively upgrade in line with their workload. It is a reduced cost way of being able to provide high productivity print.”
According to Weymans, a Rex
press will enable a printer to produce almost all, 90 per cent of all end-use applications, of the print of a new Xeikon. He says, “Food and beverage, health and beauty, chemicals, beer, wine, and spirits, these are all labels for instance that can be produced with a Rex press, on the related substrates.”
Another Cheetah
on the run
The latest introduction for the label market is the Xeikon CX300. Xeikon says the Cheetah 2.0 technology
for Xeikon CX300 is based on
the proven, scalable Xeikon press architecture that includes five print stations and a full rotary process with a variable repeat length. The dry
Left
Versatile technology: Trevor Crowley, ANZ country manager, Xeikon
toner printing process can operate
at a speed of 30m/min. The web- width can vary between 220mm and 512mm wide, using a LED imaging head operating at 1200x3600 dpi delivering, says Xeikon, offset/ gravure image quality. Where it stands apart is its cloud connectivity, man-machine interface, all geared for digitised manufacturing.
Xeikon has both toner and inkjet print systems for the label industry. It covers the broadest scope of media, applications, and cost. According
to Crowley, this meets the need for new opportunities. Xeikon made its mark as a toner based system, and
its Cheetah press for labels is the latest iteration of its technological development, while for inkjet it has its own Panther technology, and the Jetrion it bought from EFI.
Weymans says, “Xeikon is not a standard four-colour printing system. Its capabilities far exceed that and will go to wherever you want to take it. For instance, Guru Labels on the NSW Central Coast bought a machine in 2015 that was specified for 9.6 metres a minute. Two years later they upgraded to 19.2 metres a minute, doubling their capacity, without having to add an extra machine, extra operators, or extra floorspace. We have CMYK + white, which is crucial for high-end labels. Our extensive knowledge will help printers understand what their options are, they may be thinking for instance of getting into in-mould labels, or heat transfer, we can tell them exactly what to expect, how to make it work on the press what the dynamics are.”
From its dramatic entrance to the print world all those years ago to
its leading position today, Xeikon has stuck closely to its strategy of creating print systems that will enable its customers to win in
their markets, through a taking holistic view of the requirement and creating print systems to meet those requirements. 21
Sirius for Xeikon SX30000
commercial
Xeikon’s latest Sirius toner is a new-generation dry toner technology, which the company says delivers higher speeds, reduced cost of ownership and improved quality.
The new-generation Xeikon SX30000 press is as an entirely new, robust single-pass duplex machine, powered by the new Sirius technology. It is able to run at a printing width of 508mm, on a broad range of substrates, at 30 metres a minute. It can produce 404 A4 pages a minute at an average speed increase of more than 50 per cent on the range of 40-350 gsm versus the previous platform. “It is the fastest digital B2 press on the market,” Crowley says.
Xeikon has been allocating major resources since 2017 to set a new standard in dry toner technology, and develop a new platform for the industry.
“The water cooled LDAs, with 1200x3600 dpi technology and the single-pass duplex, full rotary concept, have remained unchanged, as well as the five over five print station setup. Almost everything else has been re-engineered,” Filip Weymans, vice- president marketing at Xeikon says.
“One of the things that really sets the Sirius technology apart is its ability to print on heavy substrates at high speeds.”
Weymans says, “We have been working along four major axes: toner development, imaging technology, fusing technology, and media conditioning.
“An important step to bring Sirius technology to a new era of productivity is realised thanks to Xeikon’s new EkoFuse technology: a new fuser and a patented new crossflow cooling system add up to achieve superior print quality levels at market leading speeds.”
For the newly developed Sirius toner, Xeikon has changed the production parameters of the toner. It has also improved the charging kinetics properties by adapting the outer shell of the toner to cope with the higher engine speed. Xeikon says its new developer unit ensures image quality for high coverage applications.
With the Xeikon SX30000, Xeikon is aiming at high value applications, usually featuring high coverage colour content on high-quality papers combined with superior quality requirements.
Crowley says, “This can be in the book printing segment or high-quality direct mail. But, because of the versatility of the technology, it might also be in retail and signage materials, security printing and other general commercial print. Furthermore, we are looking at customers who need higher productivity combined with lower running cost and a compelling overall TCO.”
Xeikon is targeting printers who have two or more SRA3 cutsheet toner presses. “They can consolidate their production into one press that means less floorspace, less operators, less energy,” Weymans says.
Xeikon is also targeting web offset printers who are seeing run lengths come down, and also printers operating high-speed inkjet looking to cover shorter, uneconomical digital runs.
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