Digital Printing-Toner - Cut Sheet (Color)

GRAPH EXPO returned to Chicago last month, bringing printers together from all over the globe. Despite its earlier than usual start the weekend after Labor Day, the four-day graphic arts trade show packed a decent crowd. Granted, opening day attendance thinned noticeably around NFL kickoff time (it was the season opener, after all), but by day two McCormick Place was jammed solid. An impressive 640 exhibitors (including 120+ new ones) spread out across 460,984 net square feet of exhibit space. In-plants interested in wide-format printing or in mailing/fulfillment could go to special sections of the show floor where such equipment was clustered.

I HEADED up to New York a few weeks ago to take part in the very first TransPromo Summit, a two-day series of seminars dedicated to the practice of printing promotional messages on transaction documents. More than 300 people packed the Hilton New York, in-plants among them, to learn about this up-and-coming marketing opportunity. As word combinations go, “transpromo” has always sounded a little clunky to me. (I think it’s the “trans” part; makes me think of “trans fat.”) The word seems to have stuck, though, so now I guess we’re stuck with it. Linguistics aside, the summit was rather a big

HEWLETT-PACKARD launched its $300 million worldwide marketing campaign in style. More than 700 guests joined 100 HP employees on the 52nd floor of 7 World Trade Center in New York recently to hear about “Print 2.0: Extending the Power of Print.” Out of the massive wall-to-wall windows, attendees (in-plants, commercial printers, commercial businesses, even some Fortune 500 companies) could see the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge and more. However, the main attraction was inside: HP’s “Experience Center,” which resembled a Hollywood set, complete with a faux bedroom, living room, home office, business office, retail store, winery

OUR IN-PLANT just made a big change in the way it does business: we sprang for “Big Color”—a digital color press. Over an eight-month period we considered the Canon C7000VP, the HP Indigo 3050, the IKON CPP 650, the Kodak NexPress 2100, the Konica Minolta bizhub PRO C6500, Océ’s CPS900 and CS650 Pro, and Xerox’s DocuColor 6060, 7000 and 260. Many of you are considering a similar acquisition, so I will share some aspects of our experience with you.

MINNEAPOLIS—Sept. 24—Delphax Technologies Inc., a global provider of high-speed digital printing systems, announced today that it will demonstrate an in-line perfect bound book production system featuring the Delphax CR2200 at MBO Open House Innovation Days Nov. 7-9 in Westampton, N.J. The Delphax CR2200 is the fastest monochrome toner-based digital print system in the world, operating at 500 feet per minute. Advantages of the CR2200 press include improved cycle times, higher productivity and reduced labor. These and other advantages provide lower overall production costs and increased throughput capabilities. The range of production capability also allows CR2200 Book Solution customers to increase the amount of short

Ricoh Americas Corp. has established a new Production Printing Business Group (PPBG) to specifically focus on the unique, customer driven requirements of data center, in-plant and graphic arts environments. PPBG will have a dedicated direct sales team, channel operations and solutions engineers working to define, build, implement and support production printing solutions. According to the company, it will offer a portfolio of proven, and evolving, monochrome and color products, along with best-in-class alliance partners. Included in the group is the recently formed InfoPrint Solutions Co., Ricoh’s new joint venture with IBM. At Gaph Expo, the company previewed its “Ricoh Future Color” (RFC) technology in a corner

CHICAGO—More aggressive promotion to in-plants was part of the plan the sponsors of Graph Expo implemented to build traffic at the 2007 show. It’s still not known if that part of the effort paid off, but the Graphic Arts Show Co. (GASC) is projecting that overall attendance was up. While cautioning that official attendance figures are still pending, GASC Vice President Chris Price believes attendance was up slightly over last year. In 2006, the show company switched to reporting verified attendees, rather than all registrations. An impressive 640 exhibitors, including 120+ new ones, filled the sold-out exhibit hall. Along with the offset and digital printing equipment

Graph Expo 2007 visitors can see NEXPRESS systems running at Kodak booth 1246 and Ricoh booth 3046 CHICAGO—September 9—Kodak and Ricoh Americas Corporation announced at Graph Expo 2007 a U.S. reseller agreement under which Ricoh will offer four KODAK NEXPRESS Digital Production Color Presses to its customers in the in-plant, data center and graphic arts market “NEXPRESS Digital Production Color Presses give Ricoh customers a proven, high end production color solution that compliments our office and light production color products,” said Carl Joachim, Vice President, Marketing, Ricoh’s Production Printing Business Group. “The combination makes perfect sense, combining Ricoh’s strength in the office market with

A panel of consultants and editors has chosen the six top survival technologies for printers, and management information systems leads the pack. The other five, according to the Graph Expo 2007 “Must See ’Ems” Technology and Product Selection Committee, are: • Digital production printing (including toner and ink-jet systems) • Workflow • Information technology (including the ability to properly install, use and maintain the equipment) • Web-to-print capability (including the ability for customers to submit jobs electronically) • Color management The Committee also identified these additional technologies as having a significant impact on printers’ success: • Litho press automation (not including JDF) • Computer-to-plate technology • Preflight software

When the lease on his in-plant’s Xerox DocuColor 2045 was nearing its end, Joe Geffre started shopping around. Not only did he want the quality printing (and variable data capabilities) that a more modern device would provide, he knew that the students in his school’s graphic arts program would benefit from using state-of-the-art technology—and his shop’s 13-year-old Xeikon digital press was becoming more antiquated by the day. “We wanted to make sure that the kids are trained on the latest and greatest,” says Geffre, director of Mail and Document Services at Pennsylvania College of Technology, in Williamsport, Pa. His 10-employee print and mail operation