Ricoh to demo inkjet on coated offset paper in action
The VC60000 is being shown for the first time in public, and will be printing on standard coated offset paper to underline the potential markets for the press.
Ricoh will give a public debut to the VC60000 inkjet press, printing a job that was last produced on its entry level Pro 5100 sheetfed inkjet press. That job, The Cult of Porsche: In the beginning, will be printed on offset papers. At this point this is thought to be the only inkjet press at the Innovation Days printing directly to offset paper. The VC6000 uses a priming coat to optimise the paper’s surface and a pot printing protective coating to prevent marking in finishing processes.
The perfect bound book was first produced for the London Book Fair last year on the company’s entry level production press where quality was deemed more than a match for more expensive digital presses. A second job is a catalogue for cycle producer Bianchi where reproduction of spokes and other details will show that inkjet is capable of matching offset for quality.
The VC60000 is among the first of a breed of inkjet web presses that promise to move the technology away from transactional and low quality direct mail products squarely into offset litho territory. Response to the initial presentations at the opening of the customer experience centre in Telford late last year has been “exceptionally positive” says Stephen Palmer head of production print Ricoh UK.
The press will be running in full duplex mode with a print resolution of 1200 x1200dpi from its Ricoh inkjet heads. The targets are direct mail, marketing material and books. At the Innovation Days, the press will be fronted by a Hunkeler unwind and will run to a Hunkeler rewind unit. Alongside will be a finishing line which takes the reel from a Hunkeler UW6 unwind unit, feeds it through a folder and high speed cross-cutter to deliver 8-,12-16- or 20pp signatures via an SD7 double star wheel delivery at speeds up to 180m/min.
The Bianchi catalogue features as a job on the cut sheet Pro C9100 130ppm digital press. This is conventional toner press configured with the long sheet option enabling it to print a 700mm long banner, or in this case a 650mm cover section on 300gsm paper.
Software being demonstrated under the TotalFlow banner includes BatchBuilder, its application for grouping jobs which share characteristics to enable them to be grouped for efficient production flows; Process Director, the graphic arts friendly software to drive its continuous feed printers and MarcomCentral, the system to manage the creation and implementation of variable data and cross media marketing campaigns.