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.

"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 a tour of Canon's Poing manufacturing facility, where employees assemble products like the Arizona wide-format printers, the VarioStream 7000/8000 and the ColorStream 3000.

Also this week in Munich, Canon unveiled a new flatbed system during the FESPA Digital 2014 show. The Océ Arizona 6100 Series has been optimized for high-speed production of rigid media applications and boasts two independent printing zones, each with its own vacuum system, for simultaneous printing and media loading/unloading.