Page 32 - Print 21 Magazine Sep-Oct 2020

Inkjet Sheetfed
Sheetfed inkjet B2
Commercial printers have the option of offset or inkjet, with a plethora of cutsheet inkjet systems now
on the market. Print21 checks out the state of play.
If drupa had run this June as planned, printers attending the giant show would have seen a range of sheetfed digital inkjet printing systems that are now
available. Major name developers like Fujifilm, Screen, Konica Minolta, Canon, and Fuji Xerox all now have inkjet cutsheet. There would though have been no Heidelberg inkjet printer, even if it had gone to the show, as it has stopped development and production of its Primefire, the world’s first B1 inkjet press, as part of its drive to focus its press business on the B1 and B2 offset markets. As well as ending the Primefire project, Heidelberg has stopped making large format presses, sold Gallus, and offloaded its MIS business.
The only other B1 digital press
is the Landa S10, targeted initially
at the packaging market with single-sided printing. Landa has
had a convoluted journey since it electrified drupa 2012 with his vision of nanographic press technology, which it presented as offset quality on offset stock at offset speed, but with no plates, no waste and no makeready. Some 400 printers lined up to pay Landa $10,000 for a place in the queue, including a few from Australia. Fast forward eight years though and the Landa technology is not yet available in ANZ, although it is starting to go in to various sites in Europe, the US and China. The new Koenig & Bauer Durst joint venture would also have had a B1 digital press to show at drupa, also designed for the carton market.
In B2 inkjet, the technology is advancing faster. In fact, the Fujifilm and Screen B2 inkjet presses have been available since 2012, with the Konica Minolta KM-1 AccurioPress aka Komori Impremia S29 available here for the past three years. Canon has just released an updated version of its SRA3 i300 inkjet press, the iX, while Xerox has had its SRA3 inkjet Baltona, but that is not available here.
HP Indigo has a sheetfed B2 press, but this is not inkjet, it has
its own proprietary liquid toner. HP Indigo has by far the most installs in the B2 digital sheetfed sector, more than all other digital presses combined, in fact.
The inkjet sheetfed developers, it is fair to say, are still waiting for an upswing in the take-up, with only a handful of inkjet sheetfed presses around ANZ, a situation that is replicated in comparable markets of Western Europe and the US.
But it is not so long ago that almost all smaller print shops, and some of the bigger ones, had SRA3 offset presses humming along, indeed the world’s biggest- ever selling offset press was the Heidelberg GTO, an SRA3-sized machine. Now barely any SRA3
“Factories and presses that are cloud connected to workflow, track and trace, shipping — this is the Holy Grail, where digital connectivity takes out an increasing amount of human touchpoints.”
offset presses are manufactured, although they do retain some fans who have specific applications – Steve Todisco’s Affinity Print for instance uses them as part of its in- house packaging print solution.
The introduction of toner-based digital colour printers from what were the major office products developers – Canon, Fuji Xerox, Konica Minolta, and Ricoh – allied with the EFI Fiery rip that could more or less guarantee colour fidelity, saw the SRA3 offset presses disappear within just a few years. The logic was compelling, a green- button operation, no makeready, with inline finishing, flat sheets in one end, printed, bound brochures out the other, and for a fraction of the price of offset. Sure, once you got past a few hundred copies the printing itself took longer, but for
32 Print21 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020