Canon Debuts Devices at Customer Event in Germany

To demonstrate its numerous printing systems to the European market, Canon recently held a two-week event at its Customer Experience Center in Poing, Germany, called Canon for Business 2014. More than 2,600 customers visited the facility, where they attended seminars and watched demos of of Canon’s wide-format, cut-sheet and continuous-feed devices.

A spacious facility with high ceilings, the Customer Experience Center is reminiscent of a trade show setting, unlike Canon’s customer centers in Boca Raton, Fla., and Melville, N.Y., which resemble office environments. Roll-fed equipment is clustered in one area with cut-sheet and wide-format printers together in another section, separated by a large open area used as an auditorium and cafeteria. Stretching along one wall is the impressive Océ InfiniStream folding carton press, which uses liquid toner technology and boasts the productivity of a sheetfed offset press.

IPG joined other U.S. and European industry publications for the event, during which Canon launched several color and monochrome printers for the European market and offered updates on Project Niagara, Canon’s much-anticipated cut-sheet color inkjet printer. Announced during the event were:

• The Océ ImageStream 3500 continuous-feed color inkjet press, which can can print on offset coated paper stocks at 525 feet per minute at 1,200x600 dpi. It uses flexible droplet modulation for even higher perceived image resolution.
• The Océ VarioStream 4000 monochrome simplex/duplex continuous-feed press. The toner-based device has a a speed range between 180 to 1,200 pages per minute (ppm).
• The Océ VarioStream 7110 continuous-feed toner printer, printing at 108 ppm simplex, for entry-level transactional printing.
• The light-production imagePRESS C800 Series cut-sheet press (to be shown at Graph Expo, with U.S. availability in the fourth quarter). It prints 80 ppm on paper up to 220 gsm using new CV (Consistently Vivid) toner. Compact Registration Technology ensures that every image is placed in the same location every time on every sheet. A 32 beam Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser unit with multi-exposure technology delivers 2,400x2,400-dpi resolution.

Though not physically at the event, Project Niagara received a good deal of attention. At a display area with the machine’s footprint outlined on the floor, attendees watched a video demonstration of the cut-sheet inkjet technology and got a chance to question specialists about the product, which will print 300 A4 images a minute (on standard offset media) when it debuts next year. It will use Canon ColorStream inkjet print head technology and Canon-developed aqueous inks. Niagara will be targeted at applications like transactional materials, direct mail, books and manuals.

“We’re building Niagara to produce good quality on standard media,” remarked David Preskett, Professional Print Director at Canon Europe, during a press conference.

Select visitors also got to tour Canon’s Poing manufacturing facility, where employees assemble products like Arizona wide-format printers, the VarioStream 7000/8000 and the ColorStream 3000. Some attendees were also given a glimpse of a next-generation Canon color technology, still in development. Canon officials noted that the company invests 8 percent of its sales revenue in research and development worldwide, and registered more than 3,800 patents last year.