Kodak and HP will face off just a few metres from each other at the forthcoming Hunkeler Innovation Days. Visitors will inevitably compare the Kodak Prosper Ultra 520 which makes its exhibition debut in Lucerne, with the HP Advantage 2200, the inkjet press which was launched at the end of last year and comes to Europe for the first time.
Both machines run 520mm conventional papers and both are aimed at transitioning offset work to inkjet printing. While the pair are the latest in the arena, they will come up against Canon’s ProStream, Ricoh’s Pro VC70000E and Screen’s 520 HD. All are lined up in Hall 2 of the Lucerne exhibition centre, running a range of work in the main reel to reel with a separate finishing line, based around Hunkeler products.
For Kodak, this means a publication combining magazine and marketing content in different combinations, necessitating high quality imagery, heavy ink coverage and an offset coated paper. It will run at 150m/min at a resolution of 1800x600dpi.
The HP PageWide Advantage will reach this speed, though falls to 100m/min for its highest quality setting. This is delivered through the version with three drying sections. The configuration to appear at Hunkeler Innovation Days is not yet known, though with plans to show it running at 152m/min on heavy stock, the fully loaded version can be expected.
The event is considered the ideal platform for both technologies – continuous inkjet for Kodak and thermal drop on demand for HP – to appeal to commercial printers. And both are aiming to take on Canon currently the leading supplier in continuous inkjet. To date no supplier has gone beyond scratching the surface of the commercial print sector.
The opportunity, and the challenge, is such that Kodak CEO Jim Continenza will attend the event. he says: “This breakthrough inkjet press eases printers’ transition from offset to digital production with its quality, productivity and application capabilities.”
Kodak plans to offer a wide range of samples from both the Prosper Ultra and the Prosper 7000 Turbo press, a press capable of running at 410m/min at a resolution suitable for newspapers and some book publishing applications.
There will be samples too from Ricoh as it will not be demonstrating the Z75 B2 sheetfed press in Switzerland.
