Digital Printing-Toner - Cut Sheet (Color)

Next month, drupa 2012 will take over Düsseldorf, Germany. IPG asks industry observers David Zwang, Jim Hamilton, Noel Ward and Bill Lamparter what they expect to see there.

MGI Digital Graphic Technology will present a prototype of its new B2 (20x29") sheetfed UV inkjet press, the Alphajet, at drupa 2012. Commercial release of the six-color plus spot or flood UV coating machine is planned for 2013.

Hundreds of graphic arts journalists from all over the world converged on Tel Aviv, Israel, in mid March, to attend HP's Pre-drupa 2012 event. HP announced 10 new systems that it will introduce at drupa in May, including one that is reportedly the first offset-quality digital press in a B2 size format (29.5x20.9˝), the HP Indigo 10000.

IPG Editor Bob Neubauer visited the 18,000-square-foot Océ Customer Experience Center to see some of the newest Océ and Canon digital hardware and software systems.

Since installing a new Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C7000, Printing & Distribution Services for the City of Portland, Ore., now prints an average of 155,000 color pages a month—a 55 percent increase over what the shop produced on its previous printer, a bizhub PRO C6500.

Harlequin set up an in-house digital paperback book printing line, staffed by seven people over two shifts, that enables the in-plant to print and finish more than 1,000 paperback books per hour. To print the books, Harlequin selected a high-volume Océ VarioStream continuous-feed printer, a toner-based solution that prints almost 10,000 books in an eight-hour shift.

Northern Oklahoma College recently installed not one but three Ricoh Pro digital printers. Customers have fallen in love with the quality color work the in-plant is now able to produce.

When the Admissions department at Rochester Institute of Technology—the biggest customer of RIT's Print and Postal Hub—turned to Director John Meyer for help with increasing enrollment, he gave the project his full attention. Admissions had set a goal to increase enrollment by 10 percent a year for the next 10 years.

Once their digital color presses are up and running, in-plants often discover a few things they wish they had known ahead of time. We asked four managers to tell us what they learned—and what they wish they had known ahead of time.

Introduced at Graph Expo, the new four-color Meteor DP8700 multi-substrate digital press from MGI Digital Graphic Technology, supports up to a 13x40˝ sheet (13x47˝ with manual bypass) and prints up to 71 ppm (letter-size) with a maximum 3,600 dpi resolution.