On Demand Offers Drupa Preview
Even though Drupa is just a month away, vendors still had plenty of new products to show at On Demand.
By Bob Neubauer
The biggest news at the recent AIIM On Demand Conference & Expo was certainly Eastman Kodak's announcement that it would purchase Heidelberg's digital printing business. That announcement, unleashed the morning of the show, slowly filtered through the crowd of 33,753 at New York's Javits Convention Center, engendering lots of speculation.
The upshot: Kodak will buy Heidelberg's 50 percent interest in the pair's NexPress Solutions joint venture, as well as the equity of Heidelberg Digital, which makes the Digimaster black-and-white printer. This plants Kodak even more firmly in the digital printing business, complementing its purchase of Scitex Digital Printing, subsequently renamed Kodak Versamark.
This was certainly not the only headline news at On Demand, which brought 448 exhibitors to New York, for what many thought of as a preview of next month's Drupa show in Düsseldorf, Germany. While many vendors were certainly holding back new products for Drupa, IPG saw a number of product debuts at On Demand. Here's a look:
Targeting Office Color
Buoyed by Gartner's recent report placing it at number one in market share in the black-and-white and color copier markets, Canon USA introduced two new copiers targeting the office color market, where it sees excellent potential.
"Office color is clearly one of the greatest opportunities that exists for us as a company," remarked Dennis Amorosano, director and general manager at Canon, during a press conference in the Good Morning America studios in Times Square.
The new imageRUNNER C6800 and imageRUNNER C3100 series will target users who produce mostly monochrome output, but need occasional color printing, as well. This differs from Canon's C3200, which was created to push printing from black and white to color.
The C6800 runs 68 pages per minute (ppm) in black and white and 16 ppm in color using Canon's Amorphous Silicon single drum system. To provide color printing with one drum, Canon houses color toners and developers in a separate rotary developing unit from the black developing unit. Auto Carrier Refresh technology ensures consistent toner distribution on the drum. An intermediate transfer belt helps the machine handle heavy stocks and specialty media. Color page costs average 10 cents.
The C3100 series outputs 31 ppm in black and white and seven ppm in color, also using a single drum and an intermediate transfer belt. It is the first Canon color engine with a vertical paper delivery mechanism.
Canon also debuted the DR-7080C scanner, which can scan 70 ppm in color, black and white or grayscale at up to 300 dpi. This is the same scanning engine developed for the C6800.
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Books For Schools For the third time at a major trade show, several vendors partnered to present the Books For Schools program. By linking their systems in a continuous production line, Delphax Technologies, Muller Martini, Stralfors, Shuttleworth, KTI, Boise Paper Solutions and Xeikon produced more than 7,000 books for the New York City public school system.
The production line impressed visitors by producing a 200-page book every five seconds, starting from blank paper and ending in a bound copy of such classics as Last of the Mohicans, Pride and Prejudice, Sherlock Holmes and The Odyssey.
Xeikon joined the partnership this year, using its 500 D press to produce the four-color covers. Delphax offered its CR1300 digital web press to print the black-and-white pages. A flying splicer from Keene Technologies allowed production to continue non-stop. A Stralfors LASERMAX LX560 cutter and LX565 stacker created cut-sheet book blocks, and then a Shuttleworth Star Roller conveyor accumulated and indexed the results. Finally a Muller Martini AmigoDigital perfect binder bound the book blocks and covers, which were then trimmed with the new Muller Martini Esprit three-knife trimmer. |
Canon wasn't the only company eyeing the office market. A little over a year after Konica and Minolta announced their merger, Konica Minolta Business Solutions showed its first product bearing the Konica Minolta name, the C350. It is designed to bring color into the office by reducing its cost to near that of black-and-white copying. The multifunction printer outputs 35 ppm in black and white and 22 ppm in color using Simitri polymerized toner. It has a built-in print controller and offers advanced scanning capabilities.
The company also showed the 1050 on-demand printing system, a 105-ppm black-and-white on-demand system. This high-volume, low cost-per-copy device offers 100-sheet stapling, 50-sheet saddle-stitching for thicker booklets, seven-position folding, multiple stackers and pre-flight software. It has a 9,000-sheet paper capacity and a 10,000-sheet output capacity, plus a double-feed paper detection system to minimize jams, along with an air-assisted paper feed system.
Sharp showed a trio of new multifunctional copiers at the show. The AR-M550/M620/M700 digital imagers boast Scan2 Technology, which scans both sides of a two-sided document in a single pass, saving time and wear on the equipment. The 150-sheet duplex single-pass feeder allows documents to be scanned at 65 images per minute simplex and 76 ipm duplex. Output speeds are 55 ppm, 62 ppm and 70 ppm respectively at 600 dpi.
Another new copier, the Sharp AR-C260, produces color copies at 26 ppm (32 ppm in black and white). Available as the AR-C260 P-Series or the AR-C260 M-Series Color IMAGER (which handles color network scanning, plus saddle-stitch, V-fold or three-position stapled sets), both models come with device monitoring, remote e-mail diagnostics, Sharpdesk software and secure personal identification number printing.
Ricoh showed its Aficio 2105 with the the GBC StreamPunch for the first time. The Aficio 2105 outputs 105 ppm and features the Fiery EB-105EX high-volume performance controller and the new BF90 Book Folder that provides new performance finishing capabilities.
On Demand also brought out new products from Océ, including the Océ TCS400 large-format color print, copy and scan system for technical documents. It reportedly processes very large color files three times faster than other thermal ink-jet printers, and produces twice the number of monochrome prints per hour. It lets users manage print queues directly from their desktops.
Océ also introduced the VarioStream 9000, a black and color-capable digital printing platform. Océ TriboPrint multi-stage imaging technology enables black-and-white and up to five-over-five color printing, with simultaneous duplex printing and contactless infrared fusing.
Xeikon International showed its new Xeikon 5000, with the Swift digital front-end. Swift processes PostScript, PDF, PPML and PPML/VDX files at high speeds. The web-fed press can print 7,800 full-color pages per hour. The Axeda DRM client-software solution allows Xeikon to remotely monitor press runs and proactively intervene.
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In-plant Best Practices When they weren't prowling the exhibit floor, attendees had their choice of numerous educational sessions at On Demand. At one of them, IPG Editor Bob Neubauer moderated a panel discussion with four successful in-plant managers who shared some of the ideas that have brought success to their in-plants. Participating were: • Deborah Berlow, director of Brown University Graphic Services • Mike Renn, assistant vice president of Corporate Services, Mellon Financial • Paul Kazarov, chief of the Publishing Section at the United Nations • Steve Sherman, director of DAPS at the Defense Logistics Agency Two years ago at Brown University, Berlow undertook the trying task of centralizing all printing under the in-plant's control. She created a partnership program with preferred vendors, reducing the vendor list from 300 to 40. She was also able to migrate 36 percent of the offset work to her in-plant's digital systems, reducing production time by 40 percent. Quality control has improved as a result of print centralization. At Mellon, Renn focuses on customer success, not just satisfaction. This has improved customer loyalty, which had lead to increased revenue. Instead of just asking for customer feedback on the in-plant's performance, he asks what else the in-plant can do for customers. Renn also strives to motivate his staff by listening to their ideas, educating and cross-training them and sharing credit with them whenever the in-plant is praised. Running the U.N.'s six-language, 24-hour in-plant is always a challenge, Kazarov said. Whenever the Security Council is in session, the in-plant must be ready to go to work. "We have a lot of [equipment] redundancy because the deadlines are so tight, there's no space for any failure," he said. The in-plant's success, he said, came in part from learning about and implementing new technology well before it hit the mainstream. CTP was added in 1996, and he started training people in PDF early on. "If you do not understand the technology, you will not be able to sell it to upper management," he said. He is also a believer in bringing clients to the in-plant to train them and show them what the in-plant can do for them. Sherman has focused on moving away from bulk printing and warehousing and into print on demand. But his operation is also moving a lot of print-on-demand work online by building indexed databases that customer can access via the Web. His in-plant has also found success by getting embedded in its customers' business processes, he said. |
Xerox touted its new FreeFlow Print Manager, which lets print providers manage both digital and offset jobs with one interface. A production manager can run a job on a digital device or an offset press from the same workflow system. Based on an open architecture and JDF, FreeFlow Print Manager enables a common set of electronic instructions to direct a job from creation and ordering to fulfillment and distribution. At the end of this month it will be available as an option on Creo's Prinergy 2.20 workflow management system. (Xerox recently named Creo its software partner of the year.)
Xerox unveiled three FreeFlow product upgrades: DigiPath 4.1 Professional Production Software, which converts Microsoft Office documents to PDFs; a new version of Enterprise Output Management Services software with a document enhance feature; and the DocuSP 3.8 printer controller, which now supports PPML GA 2.0 for variable data printing.
Xerox also announced its DocuMate 252 color sheetfed document scanner. It scans 50 images per minute in duplex mode, and can scan right to searchable PDF.
Authoring Variable Data
Creo showed off the latest version of its Darwin variable information authoring tool. Version 6.0 converts QuarkXPress documents into variable data documents where all elements, including text, graphics and backgrounds, are dynamic. It can handle very large databases and includes a new Aqua-based user interface. Version 6.0 supports optimized PostScript files, allowing faster file creation by retaining a single copy of the static data in the PostScript file. Darwin supports Mac OSX and QuarkXPress 6.0. It is available in Darwin Desktop and in the new, more powerful Darwin Pro for use with complex jobs.
Creo also previewed version 4.0 of the Spire CXP6000 color server for Xerox digital color presses. It introduced a new GUI design that is simpler to use and enables better customization, quick processing and job tracking.
EFI introduced version 2.0 of the EFI Digital StoreFront job submission tool, the first software release since EFI acquired T/R Systems in October 2003. New automation features eliminate manual handling of files to accelerate online proofing and job turnaround time. Automated file conversion to PDF and job tracking notifications also speed approvals, billing and reporting cycles. EFI also showed Digital StoreFront Express, a more basic version, which lets customer submit files and converts them to PDFs.
Also announced was version 6.3 of EFI MicroPress, a digital prepress and production workflow management system, which offers expanded engine support and greater workflow efficiency. Enhancements include the ability to integrate with EFI Digital StoreFront Web submission and procurement software, expanded engine support for Canon CLC 1180, 1140 and 1110 color copiers, improved performance in small job workflows, automated archiving and open job ticket format in the PrintStation Manager application, and a new intuitive color management interface.
EFI also debuted EFI PrintSmith version 7.0, with a redesigned user interface to increase ease of use for this print management information system. Highlights include the ability to open multiple invoices and estimates simultaneously, and easy copying of jobs from one to another. The enhanced costing system allows users to cost all charges at creation.
At On Demand, IBM announced new security and process automation features for Infoprint Workflow. New security features include print content verification, document authentication and print quality monitoring.
Roll Systems unveiled its new ThreeUp System at On Demand. The system integrates with wider web high-speed digital printers to produce 6x9˝ book blocks in a three-up format. Roll's three-up stack diversion functionality maintains stack quality to allow off-line binding without jogging. There is enough room between stacks for easy operator removal.
Roll exhibited its Roll-to-Fold System providing feeding and finishing for the new Kodak Versamark JetBlack printer. The system features Roll's quick-change unwinder, whose shaftless design allows one person to quickly load rolls, minimizing printer downtime.
Böwe Bell + Howell entered the mid-range perfect binding market with its new DemandWorks One Clamp perfect binder. Rated at 450 books per hour, the single-clamp binding system can service output from multiple printers. The system includes a cover scoring and trimming mechanism, which automatically adjusts to a document's thickness and eliminates the need for three-knife trimming. This allows the system to easily handle varying page counts within the same job.
Standard Finishing Systems launched the Standard Horizon AFC-546AKT floor model folder, with advanced setup automation through a user-friendly color touch-screen control panel that displays fold formats and sheet sizes. Up 100 job settings can be stored in memory, and automated setup can be accomplished in 14 seconds. It can handle papers up to 43.3˝ long at up to 35,000 sheets per hour.
International Paper announced the addition of Carolina Digital to the Carolina Coated Cover family, which works well on both digital machines and offset presses. The paper comes in eight point and 10 point C1S and 10 point C2S. Sheets are available in 8-1⁄2x11˝, 17x11˝, 18x12˝ and 18-1⁄8x13-3⁄8˝
Mohawk Paper Mills touted improvements to Mohawk 50/10, a silky smooth coated paper. The new Mohawk 50/10 ultra now provides two shades including a new 96-bright Blue White. The new shade was created in response to a growing market preference for bluer whites. New 50/10 features a smoother surface side-to-side, and improved stiffness and opacity. Mohawk also promoted its environmental efforts. It recently joined with the Forest Stewardship Council in a pilot program that provides FSC certification to Mohawk Color Copy 100% Recycled.
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AIIM ON DEMAND 2005, will take place in Philadelphia, May 17-19. Find out more at www.ondemandexpo.com.
