Canon Launches Digital Presses at Customer Event

Canon launched several color and monochrome printers this week in conjunction with its Canon for Business 2014 event, which took place at the Canon Customer Experience Center, in Poing, Germany. Hundreds of customers, analysts and journalists (including IPG) attended the event, about a half hour from Munich. It included seminars and demos of Canon's portfolio of wide-format, cutsheet and continuous-feed devices and software. Attendees were also given a glimpse of a next-generation Canon color technology, still in development.

Launched this week in Europe (with U.S. availability to follow) were:

• The Océ ImageStream 3500 continuous-feed press, which can can print on offset coated paper stocks at 525 feet per minute.
• The Océ VarioStream 4000 monochrome simplex/duplex continuous feed press, with 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 cutsheet press, which prints 80 ppm on paper up to 220 gsm using new CV (Consistently Vivid) toner.

Though not physically at the event, Canon's much-anticipated cut-sheet color inkjet printer, dubbed "Project Niagara," received a lot of attention. Attendees watched a video demonstration of the technology and got a chance to question specialists about the product, which will print at anticipated production speeds of up to 8,500 duplexed letter sheets per hour when it debuts next year.