Agfa is ready to launch the SpeedSet Orca B1 inkjet press into the wild having completed beta testing at the Delta Group in north London. The press has been running production jobs and its about to go into full production.
The company took on the challenge of testing the press 12 months ago and now COO Martin Shipp says: “The press is so versatile that we can utilise it for a wide variety of applications using different fibre based substrates. We can run jobs that we would have traditionally run on our offset lines, giving us much more flexibility on the production floor without compromising quality.”
The Orca has been billed as the most productive B1 inkjet press on the market and targets carton printing. It uses water based inks with a primer and seal/varnish inline to protect and enhance the image and has a top speed of 11,000sph. Top resolution is 1200dpi, but this drops throughput to 5,500sph. Top speed is achieved at 600x600dpi. An intermediate 1200x600dpi gives a print speed of 7,000sph.
Delta’s machine is a four-colour press with Agfa saying that seven inkjet arrays are an option.
There are also options on the material it prints. It will print on coated carton board from 0.2mm to 0.9mm, on lightweight corrugated boards up to 2mm thick and on coated papers from 0.15mm to 0.7mm.
The press will compete with the Koenig & Bauer Durst Varijet 106 in the carton market and the Landa Digital Printing S10 and S11 for both paper and carton printing. All the machines are expensive which in a nervous market is restricting take up.
A top sheet feeder delivers the substrate to the conveyor which centres the sheet on a steel vacuum conveyor taking the material under priming, printing and then the digital varnish with a camera inspection system to feed back any corrections that might be needed to the Asanti software running the press. Agfa uses its thin film ink experience from large format printers to reduce volumes of ink delivered to the 1060x750mm sheet. A combination of hot air and IR dry the sheet before delivery to the stack.
Delta has experience with EFI’s Nozomi inkjet press for display graphics printing before agreeing to take on the SpeedSet Orca. The Nozomi has limitations on the materials it can print on compared to the SpeedSet.
