The printers, which offer speeds of 80ppm and 65ppm respectively, are being showcased for the first time in Europe at the Grafitalia show starting today, and will receive their UK launches at North Print & Pack later this month.According to the manufacturer the two new presses are designed to meet the needs of lower volume users wanting high print quality combined with production speeds and a small physical footprint. They sit at the entry level of Ricoh's digital cut sheet press portfolio, followed by the Ricoh Pro C651, Pro C751 and the Pro C901 Graphic Arts+.
Unique to the C5110S and C5100S however is a newly developed toner formation and an enhanced toner transfer technology.
Ricoh stated that the new toner formation increased the colour gamut by 10% compared with its Pro C751 series, and fused at lower temperatures to offer quicker warm up times and so increased productivity.
Meanwhile a newly improved "flexible and versatile fusing assembly" is designed to enable high quality printing on challenging substrates such as envelopes.
Graham Moore, Ricoh’s director of business development for the Production Printing Group in the EMEA region commented that, though Ricoh continually sought to enhance existing models, the latest upgrades would not be directly transferrable to the C5110S and C5100S’s predecessors.
"It’s not always possible to make presses retrospectively changeable," he said. "These enhancements won’t be directly transferred onto current models, but we will continue to enhance the portfolio as we move forward."
Moore added that, although both models boasted compact footprints of 835x880x1,230mm and ease of use features such as LED indicators to alert operators to urgent tasks and interfaces with animated instructions, both were squarely aimed at the production printing market.
He added: "Their physical footprints are more similar to those of the corporate environment and the production speeds might seem similar to an office model, but these have absolutely got production attributes, so fit within the production class range."
"Everything from development, media configuration, distribution and support is consistent with our higher production presses."
The C5110S and C5100S will be commercially available this year in Q2 (July-Sept) of the manufacturer’s financial year, with pricing yet to be confirmed.