High speed digital inkjet developer InfoPrint Solutions invited AP Editor Wayne Robinson to view its regional development and demonstration centre Shanghai
High speed inkjet will be a key technology for Australian printers who make the trip to Ipex in three months time, but some are already getting a close insight by taking the shorter trip up to Shanghai to the new InfoPrint Solutions Asia Pacific Innovation Centre.
Opened just six months ago with an investment of some $5m, the Innovation Centre is located in Shanghai, and has been established to serve printers across the Asia Pacific region, including those from Australia.
Chris Reid, vice president Asia Pacific at InfoPrint Solutions, says, “The new Technology Centre has a three-fold purpose; to showcase our latest solutions, to highlight the connectivity with third party solutions, and to act as an education centre where the full potential of high speed digital is understood.”
InfoPrint Solutions is a joint venture between Ricoh and IBM formed two and a half years ago, and under a sliding ownership scale, Ricoh will assume full control of the company in July this year. The company claims a market leading position in the high speed inkjet colour market with its 5000 series printer, which represent about half the 200 high speed colour inkjets so far installed around the world.
The InfoPrint 5000 is built from a Screen engine, Epson inkjet heads and inks, with superior controller architecture based on hardware provided by IBM and software developed by InfoPrint Solutions. Unwind and finishing options include Hunkeler and LaserMax. Reid says the Epson piezo electric inkjet nozzles, of which there are 50,000 in each head, provide the smallest drops available. The new Innovation Centre also has an InfoPrint 4100 monochrome continuous form printer.
A key part of the visit to the new Innovation Centre was a presentation by Joe Czsyzczewski, (thankfully known as Joe C) the company’s chief sustainability officer. He highlighted the rapidly growing environmental awareness, and its impact on business, and the recycling benefits of the InfoPrint Solutions products. According to Czsyzczewski environmental requirements on business have doubled in the past five years, and will likely double again in the next five, and most companies and organisations are moving beyond these regulations and implementing ever tighter environmental requirements.
Czsyzczewski says the company is looking to work through a framework of the three Ps of planet, people and profit, so helping reduce the environmental impact of society to a level the earth’s self recovery capability can deal with. Ricoh has strong environmental credentials, it has been in the Global 100 Most sustainable Corporations for five years in a row, and with that list being drawn from around 1800 of the world’s biggest corporations, and turnover on the list around a third each year Ricoh is clearly walking the walk on sustainability.
His view is that print is not moving as fast as the ‘other guys’ with the need to reduce the environmental impact now looming large over print. However he doesn’t mean competing communicating technologies, but the likes of Greenpeace, friends of the earth etc. He points out that in the US alone 2.6 million tonnes of e-waste was generated in 2005, with 87.5 per cent of it going to landfill, while the figure in the EU is even higher, ten years ago there were six million tonnes of e-waste.
Not surprisingly Czsyzczewski sees high speed inkjet as a breakthrough technology. Not only in its actual printing ability, but also in its green credentials when compared with other print processes, especially conventional laser/toner technologies. He says there is a fundamental difference in the inkjet and toner technologies, as inkjet does not need to heat the paper to dry, saving a significant amount of energy.
Some of the techniques available for reducing the environmental impact through the InfoPrint 5000 are fairly straightforward, Czsyzczewski says for instance that duplex printing reduces paper consumption dramatically, and with paper comprising 80 per cent of print’s carbon footprint that can be a substantial saving, in paper, in transport costs, in postage costs and activity.
He also says that the very applications that inkjet lends itself to, TransPromo for instance, means a more environmentally friendly process, as only one set of print is being produced through the marriage of the statement and the marketing collateral.
The Innovation Centre in Shanghai has been developed primarily to showcase the latest solutions from the company. Shanghai was chosen as the location as it is the commercial centre of China, customer visits so far are split 40 per cent from China, 40 per cent from the Asia pacific including Australia, and 20 per cent from Japan and the rest of the world. In fact for many European customers Shanghai is an easier trip than Boulder Colorado, where the company is headquartered.
However showing off the kit is only one part of the Centre’s purpose, it has also been developed as an interactive incubator centre, where printers and InfoPrint can develop new solutions through looking at specific applications then developing solutions with both InfoPrint and third party technologies for those applications. InfoPrint also sees the Centre as an educational centre, both for customer and its own staff. At 10,000 sq ft and loaded with software and equipment it certainly has the capability to fulfil all three functions.
Chris Reid, Asia Pacific vice president at InfoPrint highlighted the ADF, Automated Document Factory concept that the company has developed with the aim of introducing the lean manufacturing concept to printing and mailing, with accuracy, integrity and precision. Reid says, “There are three key elements: the database, with the data and meta data; the workflow engine, which automates the processes; and the API, applications programme interface.” The ADF is designed to provide an end to end printing solution to give the printer total control over each job, and to optimise efficiencies, from data creation to document composition and file submission, to printing, finishing and shipping. A dashboard and modern user interface allows print shops to instantly view information on a printer’s performance, operator activities and print jobs. So the control of the ADF provides the ability to automatically move jobs across machines and even sites to improve workload balance, it allows management and staff to view the status of all jobs in real time across any networked printer from any location, and it tracks documents through the entire production cycle. It also provides the processing power required for the conversion of complex PDF and PostScript data streams to enable improved price performance from rip intensive files.
Reid is hoping that the performance power of ADF when combined with the InfoPrint 5000 will strike a chord with some of the biggest names in Australian data printing.
On Show
Solutions currently on show at the Shanghai Innovation Centre include the InfoPrint 5000 high speed inkjet colour printer, the InfoPrint 4100 high speed monochrome toner printer, and the InfoPrint Pro C900 cut sheet colour toner printer as well as their monochrome cut sheet range.
The InfoPrint 5000 is the high speed colour inkjet solution that was actually launched in 2007, making it the first of the new generation printing solutions which are expected to be centre stage at Ipex in May. It currently has a 46 per cent market share of the fledgling industry, with around 100 presses installed around the world. Capable of printing at 32, 64 or 128 metres a minute the 5000 prints on a web with up to 507mm with 360x720dpi resolution. It prints the four process colours in either water based pigment or dye ink systems, using Epson piezo-electric print heads.
The continuous feed monochrome InfoPrint 4100 prints at up 100 metres a minute in 600dpi image quality, on a maximum web width of 19.5”, effectively three-up A5. InfoPrint says the quality is akin to that previously only achievable on cut sheet printing. Software enhancements on the 4100 include a 256 level greyscale simulation of colour objects. Stocks weights vary from 45-160gsm.
Also in show is InfoPrint’s Pro C900AFP cut sheet digital colour printer, which is essentially the Ricoh Pro C900 with the InfoPrint Advanced Function Presentation controller. The AFP is the document format originally developed by IBM Printing Systems Division but then made into an industry standard. It is designed to facilitate applications such as TransPromo. The pro C900 prints A4 sheets up to 300gsm at 90 ipm, through an EFI Fiery rip.
InfoPrint’s CEO outlook
Daisuke Segawa is the president and CEO of InfoPrint Solutions, which will soon be a wholly owned Ricoh business. Prior to his recent appointment Segawa was vice president for planning and strategy at Ricoh, and as such is the man who has driven the whole deal which saw the two industry giants create the joint venture to combine the Ricoh technologies with IBM software. IBM of course was famously involved with Xeikon in its early days of colour digital, so has been no stranger to high speed digital colour.
Speaking exclusively to Australian Printer Segawa says, “When I looked at what companies like IBM and Oce were doing with continuous forms printing it was evident there was great capability to develop new solutions combining data integrity with high speed monochrome and especially colour. IBM developed the AFP (advanced function presentation controller) which is key. Ricoh too was developing an interest in high speed colour, partly through our acquisition of Hitachi. So the creation of a joint venture combining the best of both world’s, especially as IBM was looking to offload its non-core activities was a clear choice, I saw big market opportunities.”
From his position looking at big picture developments Segawa says the future is bright for print, and will involve some significant changes, he says, “I think the move from offset to digital is just at the beginning, but it will continue to increase, especially if digital manages to develop the quality of offset printing, because then we will be able to produce a better package. I don’t think digital will replace offset in the next 10 years, but it will impact on offset printing, and just as importantly will create new markets for itself, as we are already seeing with applications such as TransPromo.”
Segawa believes market growth will be steady rather than spectacular, but he says, “That growth will be exponential. It will partly result in the changing way in which marketing people will look at printing; they will see it as delivering more value and providing more opportunity, especially when used with variable data.”
