By Simon Nias, Wednesday 21 May 2014
Canon has announced the launch of the imagePress C800 series, comprising the C700 and C800, two new colour production cutsheet presses featuring new toner, laser imaging and colour calibration technology.
Canon's new imagePress C800 series features new toner and laser imaging technology
The two new presses bridge the gap between Canon's imageRunner C9000 series, which has a duty cycle of 350,000 A4 pages and a maximum speed of 80ppm, and the imagePress C6011S, which has a duty cycle of 700,000 pages and prints up to 61.7ppm.
Of the two new devices, the imagePress C800 is the faster at up to 80ppm and has a duty cycle of 500,000 pages, while the C700 runs at 70ppm and has a duty cycle of 400,000 pages.
Canon hasn't released pricing information for the new devices, although Adrian Campomanes, European & UK product marketing manager for the C800 series, said that they would be priced between the imageRunner C9000 series (around £45,000) and imagePress C6011S (around £100,000).
He added: "We're going to be very competitive in terms of click price and hardware. The actual price will depend on the configuration, volumes and so on - but it will be between those two."
The C800 series has a number of brand new features to the imagePress range, including Canon's new Consistently Vivid (CV) toner, which has been adapted and improved from the Vivid toner on the C7011, and new automated registration and colour calibration tools.
"Digital printing [in general] has some challenges in terms of colour consistency and registration and something we have that is brand new is the Consistently Vivid (CV) toner - none of our [other] engines have this toner," said Campomanes.
"We have taken the best bits of the 7011 Vivid toner and [improved it], for example, decreased the fusing temperature of the toner, which will let us achieve the high colour consistency, because we're applying less heat so it will have less effect on the paper."
The C800 series also features a new 32 beam Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL), which delivers 2,400dpi resolution and which Campomanes said enabled manual correction of any small image deformations.
"It's similar to correcting for the keystone effect in projectors," he added. "This will help us to do something different than the competition [because] no-one in the market has something like this."
Colour calibration is carried out using the new Auto Correct Colour Tone tool for multidimensional mixed colour calibration, and the upgraded Auto Gradation Adjustment tool.
The two new devices can print on a wide variety of media, including uneven media such as textured or recycled substrates, from 52-300gsm (or up to 220gsm without any speed reduction).
Two new DFEs from EFI are available for the imagePress C800 series, based on its new FS150 Pro and FS150 platforms, including the imagePress Server F200 and G100, as well as Canon's imagePress Printer Kit B1 or OcÉ's Prismasync iPR C800 series A1.
Both devices will begin shipping in July.