The State of On-demand Printing

ON MAY 29, 2008, an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal called “Ink-jet Printers Get Set to Turn the Page.” According to author William Bulkeley, “Ink-jet printing technology that dominates inexpensive desktop printers is about to enter the world of commercial print shops. If the new technology succeeds, it could spell trouble for Xerox Corp. and lead to expanded business for Eastman Kodak Co., Hewlett-Packard Co., Ricoh Co. and other ink-jet makers.” That article, published on the first day of Drupa, as well as statements from industry experts Andy Tribute and Frank Romano, created a buzz suggesting that ink-jet printing would displace offset and toner-based printing as the dominant printing technologies. I’d like to discuss the facts behind the buzz and offer some conclusions about the real state of competing technologies.

Ink-jet’s Role Today

Ink-jet printing can be divided into two categories: continuous and drop-on-demand (DOD). Drop-on-demand systems emit single droplets of ink upon electrical stimulation. The main advantages of drop-on-demand ink-jet are its simplicity, compactness and low cost.

Continuous ink-jet (CIJ) printing involves shooting a very fine stream of ink that breaks into predictable size droplets, which can be individually deflected by an electrical current directly onto a substrate. The primary advantages of CIJ are extremely high speeds—systems run at 1,000 feet per minute (fpm), producing more than 4,000 81⁄2x11˝ pages per minute (ppm)—and the ability to print in a wide range of physical environments and on many substrates.

CIJ has proven itself for years for a variety of applications. Printers utilize ink-jet for applying addresses and messages to covers, as well as addressing inside order forms. Financial printers use widebar ink-jet systems for printing insurance and finance documents. In addition, printers have installed ink-jet systems inline on bindery equipment for applications ranging from direct mail to addressing, messaging and personalization.

The price-performance ratio of this equipment has been very attractive to printers. Entry-level models start out around $15,000, and mid-range systems begin around $50,000, excluding the controller, which adds between $35,000 and $100,000 to the total price.

These stand-alone ink-jet systems are used for addressing and mailing in a variety of in-plants. Shops that create transactional documents in heath, financial and insurance companies are frequent users of higher-end systems, while in-plants in Fortune 500 companies and universities often use the midrange systems.

Not Your Dad’s Ink-jet

The ink-jet technology discussed in the Wall Street Journal article and shown at Drupa was different, though. The latest ink-jet technologies combine advances in new jettable fluids and inks, with improved materials handling and substrates.

Screen introduced its Truepress Jet520 continuous feed, single-pass system back in early 2006. The Jet520 combines Piezo DOD ink-jet heads manufactured by Seiko Epson and water-based pigment inks. The Truepress Jet520 (also sold as the IBM Infoprint 5000), can print onto a variety of stocks, from ink-jet paper to standard paper and even uncoated paper.

In late 2007, Océ announced the JetStream 1100 single-engine system and the Océ JetStream 2200 twin system. The JetStream 1100 is a four-color ink-jet press running at 492 fpm. The two-engine Océ JetStream 2200 system prints color at 500 fpm.

On January 17, 2008, Kodak announced the Stream Inkjet Concept Press. According to Kodak, this is the future of ink-jet for Kodak and is its new CIJ approach. The print heads are manufactured using MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) technology, and the nozzle area is created from silicon. The nozzle size is around 8 microns. Kodak indicates that the image quality of the Stream Inkjet Concept Press shown at Drupa was 600 dpi but the technology is capable of going up to 1,200 dpi.

At Drupa, Kodak unveiled its first DOD ink-jet high-speed color press, the Kodak Versamark VL2000 with a print width of 20˝ and a speed of 246 fpm. Kodak recently announced a quartet of new DOD ink-jet presses: the VL6000, VL6200, VL4000 and VL42000. Kodak’s single engine VL6000 can print at speeds up 492 fpm at resolutions of 600x600 dpi. The VL6200 model is a dual-engine system that can output at the same speed and resolution, as well as perform two-up duplex operation. The VL4000 and VL4200 machines (410 fpm) can be used for the digital printing of newspapers.

On March 10, 2008, HP announced a move into the continuous feed ink-jet color printing market. The HP Inkjet Web Press is a 30˝ wide web press. This created excitement because the competitive products are 20˝ wide. This twin-engine duplex printing engine press runs at 400 fpm, which equates to 2,600 letter or A4 ppm. It is the fastest and largest format size of all these new presses, and was an impressive site at Drupa. According to HP, the cost per print is the lowest of all these new presses. HP indicates that an A4 color page with 30 percent coverage will cost $0.01 and a basic monochrome page will cost $0.0015.

Electrophotographic Developments

What struck me about that Wall Street Journal article more then anything else was the unbalanced reporting. While the advancements in ink-jet technology are impressive, so are the advancements in offset technology and electrophotographic or toner-based equipment.

At the mid-range in the market, two toner-based products got a lot of attention at Drupa: Xerox 700 and Ricoh Pro C900. The Xerox 700 is a 70-ppm color machine that is positioned between the DocuColor 260 and the Docu-Color 5000. It uses low-melt EA toner and delivers a matte finish to images, rather than the traditional glossy image.

The Ricoh Pro C900 was first shown at the 2008 On Demand show and later at Drupa. At 90 ppm, this color device claimed to yield 72,000 prints per toner bottle. Polymerized toner is pre-mixed with the developer and affixed in a single belt fusing unit to provide a wider color gamut and good fusing over a wider temperature range. It can print from 110-lb. cover to 165-lb. index.

The HP Indigo 7000 Digital Press prints 120 high-quality, four-color, A4-size ppm. HP says it is optimized to print large numbers of static jobs with run lengths ranging from one copy into the thousands, as well as variable-data work. The press offers low total cost of ownership (TCO) for customers exceeding the 1 million page level, significantly increasing the break-even point against offset.

At Drupa, Kodak launched the NexPress S3600 Digital Production Color Press, which prints at 120 ppm, the fastest in its S-Series. Modular features of the NexPress S-Class include input feeder options with up to 11,000 sheet capacity, collation capability of up to five different media, and both cut sheet and roll-fed paper on the same press.

The Xeikon division of Punch Graphix showcased the new Xeikon 8000, the Xeikon 6000 with the new 1,200-dpi imaging head and the new Xeikon 3300. With an astonishing printing speed of 230 A4 ppm, the new web-fed Xeikon 8000 has a monthly volume of more than 8 million pages.

The Xerox 490/980 Continuous Feed Printing System prints at 600 dpi and is a 20˝ wide printer that prints on substrates from 40-160 gsm, and runs at 223 fpm. It uses dry toner and flash-fusing technology, a process that does not use heat or pressure or make contact with the paper. This allows it to achieve speeds of 493 ppm (A4 or letter-size). Two engines can be linked to provide 986 ppm in duplex mode.

In what may have been the best held secret of Drupa, Xerox unveiled the iGen4. It didn’t look much different then the iGen3, but the improvements in the $640,000 machine were under the hood. The most impressive is the patented Auto Density Control technology, which uses a full-width sensor array to automatically detect and eliminate density variations and streaks while the press is running.

While exciting to discuss, these productive, high-quality, expensive color devices may not fit into your average in-plant. More appropriate are the mid-range addressing devices described earlier. The most conservative investment strategy these days is to buy something that has a capacity to meet most of your existing needs. If you can keep it busy and sustain that volume, then you have a good reason to discuss trading up or buying another.

Buzz Belies Reality

This excitement about high-speed color ink-jet technology may have created a tremendous buzz, but it was a premature and somewhat misleading buzz. Ink-jet printing is not going to kill offset or toner-based printing in the immediate future. However, the new announcements blur the advantages of each technology more than ever. The key to understanding which technology is best comes down to applications, quality, equipment cost (price per page, utilization rates) and break-even points.

Electrophotographic (toner) printing technology’s quality and speed continue to improve, resulting in a reduced price per page, even for longer print runs historically reserved for offset printing. As a result the break-even point for the latest toner devices can reach about 5,000 pages. The quality continues to improve.

Offset technology will continue to automate the makeready process with advances in computer-to-plate, auto plate loading, JDF transfer of information, auto blanket washing and ink key presets. And let’s not forget direct imaging (DI) press devices, which are being refined every year and are well suited to in-plants.

I audit about six in-plants a year and am always surprised to see very old, small, color offset presses. Some are so old that replacement parts are not available. DI presses would make good replacement presses because they offer a small footprint, high quality, quick makeready and environmentally friendly printing.

The decline in makeready costs for offset helps to reduce the advantages of ink-jet and electrophotographic printing. As a result, offset will remain the dominant printing technology for the highest-quality printing and longer run lengths. If simple variable data addressing or messaging is required, ink-jet heads may be used on the press or finishing equipment. For more elaborate, longer-run variable data, high-speed ink-jet presses would be the smartest choice.

Ink-jet’s Promise

The advances in ink-jet technologies will continue to outpace advances in electrophotographic and offset systems, both fairly mature technologies. The most important issue for in-plants to consider is equipment cost and utilization rates. Ink-jet presses are approaching the costs of mainstream four-color presses in the $1 to $5 million price range. As with other printing technologies, you need to achieve a 60 to 70 percent utilization rate to cost justify the purchase. As a result, these high-speed, color ink-jet presses may fit in-plants that have transactional or transpromo requirements. For now these high-speed ink-jet presses are best suited for specific applications.

While the quality of high-speed, color ink-jet presses is improving at a more rapid pace then the electrophotographic devices, it is not in the same league as high-quality electrophotographic or offset printing. On the other hand, these color ink-jet presses are printing “acceptable” color. This, combined with the lower price per page, will help steal market share from other printing technologies and create new applications, such as transactional, transpromo, tag, ticket and label printing. IPG

Howie Fenton is an author, trainer and consultant with NAPL. He has authored five books, two of them on digital printing. For two decades he has helped printers reduce manufacturing costs and operate more competitively. In workflow audits, the focus is on increasing productivity by overcoming bottlenecks. In benchmarking audits, he analyzes costs and value and recommends strategies to reduce pricing and increase value. In sales training, he helps sales people and CSRs understand and articulate the value of new products and technology. For more information call (800) 642-6275 extension 6328 or e-mail him at hfenton@napl.org