HP’s commitment to printing has been questioned of late. Last year, there was speculation it would spin off the graphic arts business, following the now mooted plan to sell off the PC arm. Last month, the US giant announced it was merging PCs with the Imaging & Printing Group, which oversees the Graphic Solutions Business (GSB) that includes Indigo, Scitex and its inkjet web presses. The departure of Vyomesh ‘VJ’ Joshi, formerly executive vice president of IPG, after more than three decades with the company, stoked the rumour mill. Some media reports have suggested the printer business will be marginalised.
There wasn’t wisp of these dark clouds in the air in Israel last month, when HP announced the fruits of its investments
in the printing business since last Drupa – a staggering $1 billion of R&D over four years. The company was bullish in the extreme. Ten announcements across Indigo. Upgrades across its inkjet webs.
A major push into the overprinting sector dominated by Kodak. More features for Scitex. If this is a vendor turning its back on print, it’s hard to imagine what a commitment would look like.
It is timely that these announcements were made in Israel. Alon Bar-Shany, HP’s vice president and general manager of Indigo, called the country “a start-up nation”. The tiny nation-state is a hotbed
of technological innovation, not only as the birthplace of Indigo and Scitex, but more generally. Israel’s largest employer is micro-chip manufacturer Intel, and it seems as if the developments in digital print by the likes of Indigo founder Benny Landa were drawn from a communal well of invention.
HP’s digital print portfolio is, in a word, big. The vendor is aiming – if not already succeeding – to become the Heidelberg
of the digital age. Its devices span commercial printing with Indigo, signage and POS applications with Scitex and Designjet, publishing and direct mail with the T series of inkjet web presses and its new imprinting modules, and now a major push into packaging under the auspices of the latest additions to the Indigo range.
HP promises the every machine on its Drupa stand will be new for the show.
Inkjet remains a key battleground. Cast your mind back four years ago and there’s no doubt whose inkjet technology was the most anticipated – Kodak’s Prosper presses powered by its Stream’s inkjet heads. But HP stole Kodak’s thunder in the high-speed web world, as the “bus-sized” T series presses flew off the shelf and Prosper faced criticisms around stock availability.
At Drupa 2012, there will be a raft of new products that take aim squarely at a segment of inkjet that remains Kodak’s heartland. The new frontier for HP is in hybrid print heads units, which can be retrofitted to conventional web printing lines to offer hybrid offset-digital production, allowing single-pass variable overprinting of offset shells in one pass. HP will use Drupa to demo its Print Solutions Modules, which go head to head with Kodak’s Imprinting Systems.
The idea of printhead modules is that they offer a stepping stone for printers to get into digital without the massive capital outlay for a full-blown inkjet press. Imprinting systems open up variable-data possibilities for newspapers and magazines while allowing printers to preserve the value of the conventional printing systems.
HP’s new modules can hit speeds of up to 244 metres per minute (mpm) in colour and mono, which aren’t quite as quick as Kodak’s 305mpm Prosper S10 Imprinting System. Kodak won’t surrender its dominant position easily. At Drupa, it will show the CMYK version of its S20 heads, which reach 600mpm. The S30, which can reach 914mpm, is being beta tested in Germany. HP hopes to crack the market in the price stakes. The HP units are expected to start at $600,000 for a two-unit colour system, with each unit containing the four process colour print heads.
With its Drupa launches, particularly in Indigo, HP continues to take the fight to offset. When Landa launched the first Indigo machine, the E-Print 1000, at Ipex 1993, he uttered his now famous sentence: “Everything that can go digital will go digital and printing is no exception.”
The E-Print was long ago consigned to the printing museum, but the quote remains emblazoned in large script above the testing floor at HP’s facility in Nes Ziona, just outside Tel Aviv. Here, testing continues on the machine destined to lead HP’s Drupa showcase, the latest Indigo model, which finally delivers on the long-held promise of a larger sheet size.
In fact, HP pointed to larger Indigos as far back as 2000 and again in 2004. Technological challenges clearly stalled the launch, but equally market forces played their part. In 2000, a B2 digital press would have been a peculiarity. Now the B2 digital market is getting congested, with inkjet machines from Fujifilm and Screen already well along. There is also expectation of new Drupa launches from conventional manufacturers KBA, Komori and Ryobi, who are keen to get into the space with their own machinery, rather than take the offset-digital partnership approach seen with Heidelberg.
One advantage for HP’s super-sized Indigos have is brand perception. HP’s ElectroInk is clearly favoured in the high-end digital arena.
It is easy to get to grips with the Indigo 10000. It is like any other device in the sheetfed range – with an image size 2.5 times bigger. Perhaps the bigger milestones are its two sister machines, the Indigo 20000 and 30000. The 20000 is a flexible packaging press. It will consolidate HP’s already huge market advantage in the short-run labels world, where its web-fed Indigos, such as the WS6000, have been the default standard for years.
To use the overused adage, these new HP machines are ‘evolution not revolution’. Of the new Indigos, it might be the third model that most shakes up the market. The Indigo 30000 is a sheetfed digital press designed for folding carton applications. This device could start to create, rather than serve, a market. There a plenty of possibilities for versioned or personalised cartons. If brand owners can find a marketing advantage in tailoring a cereal box to your postcode, the Indigo 30000 will come into its own. It won’t be alone though, with both Fujifilm and Screen announcing inkjet folding carton press to appear at the Messe Düsseldorf.
In fact, less headline-grabbing developments on the existing Indigo range may well prove the bigger drawcard for printers. It brings to mind Drupa 2008, when Xerox staged high theatrics around the launch of the iGen4 but only quietly released the light production Xerox 700, which went on to sell by the truckload.
The major Indigo development is ‘Enhanced Productivity Mode’ (EPM). This lower-cost running mode was first revealed when HP launched the WS6600 label press at Label Expo in 2011. Essentially, EPM works by printing just three colours – without black – to offer up to 33% higher productivity at a lower click charge (it’s worth noting that this is more than 75% of the normal click because of it requires higher volumes of cyan, magenta and yellow inks).
The new flagship is the Indigo 7600, which can hit 160ppm in EPM. This is up 33% on the 7500’s top running speed of 120ppm. The 7500 is field upgradeable to EPM, as are the 5500 and 6500.
But that’s not all, folks. The third-generation Indigos are getting some new tricks. Users familiar with features found on rival machines such as the Canon C1, Xerox Color 1000 and Kodak Nexpress will recognise many of the new special effects. For instance, the machines can be spec’d out with invisible security ink that fluoresces under UV light or can run a textured ink to creates raised images. There is also the addition of light black ink to allow higher-quality monochrome photographic images.
A unique new process is “digital embossing”. The Indigo 7600 can create a “die” by doing up to 250 passes of the textured coating to build up a raised image, which is then used to emboss other sheets. HP admits the emboss is not as deep or crisp as an analogue process, but offers a quick and cheap alternative for short-run digital jobs.
Simon Lewis, director strategic marketing at Indigo, says: “It is not an embossing killer but it is a revolution in terms of being able to do it on-press.”
The Indigo 5600 – the update to the bestseller, the 5500 – also comes with some nifty new features. The addition of EPM lets the press jump from 68ppm to 90ppm, and it can now print onto synthetic substrates. It does this through a process HP calls ‘One Shot’, which was first developed for its roll-fed presses. In the past, things like transparent substrates were prone to registration problems. One Shot avoids this by accumulating all colour separations on the blanket and transferring them to the substrate in a single pass.
Comment below to have your say on this story.
If you have a news story or tip-off, get in touch at editorial@sprinter.com.au.
Sign up to the Sprinter newsletter