Yale Goldis is confident. “This is a new standard for digital production printing,” the director of strategy for commercial products and solutions at HP PageWide Industrial declares.
He is talking about the two new machines announced to a small group of analysts and journalists in San Diego, home to the PageWide R&D department where what HP still calls ‘pens’ and the machines to exploit them are developed. PageWide is split across two sites, the other being in Corvallis, a thousand miles north in Oregon. The San Diego campus is where one of the new machines in question is being put through its paces, the technology developments tested, and no doubt a select few prospects are given previews to understand why Goldis calls this “the new standard for digital production printing”.
The machine is the PageWide 4250HDR, the latest machine to be built on the 1,060mm [42in] wide press chassis that first appeared a decade ago. It is robust and mature. The paper path is understood, drying systems tested and it has proved itself in production environments, at least in North America where the majority of these machines have been installed.
Many of these machines are also fitted with Contiweb reel changers to minimise down time. This press has the same capability and needs as speed can reach 244m/min in performance mode. This is no more than the existing T485HD. That press can only reach that speed on lighter weight papers. The new machine can run at these speeds without the trade off needed for heavier papers nor for higher ink coverage. Consequently HP reckons the new press is twice as productive.
“We would love to see this as a turning point, taking digital inkjet production to the next level,” says Goldis. “What we are now offering creates new opportunities for printers because of the work they can put on this machine to build their business in higher volume industrial scale production.
“We have shown this press to some existing customers and get the response ‘now I need to rethink my plans because of what I now see is possible’.”
That is going to include a lot more inserts, more magazines, more catalogues where run lengths have been beyond the scope of digital printing. That now changes, HP argues, particularly where an element of customisation or personalisation can be included, on covers for example. Previous machines have started from the demands of the transactional market, where lighter papers mean lower postage bills; this one starts with the heavier papers, up to 350gsm, that suit these customers.
As markets fragment towards shorter runs, more bespoke, more regional, perhaps more artisan brands, digital print’s advantage in terms of minimal makeready and waste, no plates or chemistry to dispose of, becomes stronger. The T4250 pushes into a space that has been occupied in the main by 16pp web offset presses.
The market is moving in this direction. Marc Johnson, HP’s senior segment manager for commercial products and solutions, points out that mail volumes in the US have barely shifted in the last couple of years and that attitudes towards promotional mailings have changed, “It’s no longer about spray and pray,” he says. “Campaigns have to have a measurable ROI and brands are embracing multiple channels. It means too that companies have to shrink the time from concept to mailbox and reduce the number of steps needed to get there.”
A number of major retailers in the US have swung back towards using print, some as a result of distinct falls in market share and sales volumes when their marketing become digital only. This is without the beneficial GenZ effect where youngsters, with no experience of doormat bombing junk mail, welcome the personalised messaging and receipt of something special through their mailbox.
In short the trends are paving the way for a machine like the T4250, capable of higher production levels and so able to hit the reducing long runs, with personalisation and with quality on nice grades of paper. The market wants a new standard for digital printing says HP.
The secret sauce behind the new press is in the pen and ink used. The pen is the latest version of the PageWide HDNA thermal printhead. HP’s first computer to paper output device was an XY plotter where a pen would draw the output. Consequently anything that produces physical output is known as a pen in HP parlance. The pen in this instance is the first version of the thermal inkjet printhead where ink is recirculated from the head back to a reservoir for reuse.
This immediately changes the dynamics for thermal inkjet. Ixia Rodriguez is the R&D manager who was previously involved with the T1100S 4.2 metre wide inkjet press then the launch of the T250, Brilliant Inks and the Advantage 2200 introduced just over two years ago. HP has fed user experience from this press into developments appearing on the larger machine. “We have an appreciation of what it takes to deliver the technology,” she says. “We strongly believe in vertical integration.” HP designs the printheads, the ink, the surface coatings, the drives, the transports, the dryers for almost all the Industrial inkjet presses.
She continues: “The core benefits of thermal inkjet, replaceable cartridges, gives us control over quality and very low ink waste and the ability to refine the press speed.”
The drawbacks to thermal inkjet have been that nozzles can be blocked if the ink dries out. HP overcomes this with an eight times nozzle redundancy system which eliminates the risks of white lines on the finished job and with a strategy of replacing the inkjet cartridges before this becomes a major problem. It has been a balancing act as the more water and other components used in the ink, the less the risk of nozzle blockage, but more energy is needed to dry the ink.
Recirculating the ink through the nozzles goes a long way to keeping those nozzles open for longer. It has other benefits as well. Recirculation changes the dynamics of the ink itself. For example there is less of a need for humectants or other VOCs to help prevent the ink from drying, something that becomes a challenge when the ink is on the paper and needs high energy inputs to dry. As far as the EU is concerned the ink is VOC-free.
When the freshly developed B70 ink hits the paper, coated with HP’s Optimiser fluid, the ink will dry faster. With less energy needed. This is the combination that enables the claim that the T4250 represents “the new standard for digital printing”.
It is, however, not alone. The T4250 is scheduled for launch later this year. A few months later HP will introduce the T500MHD, a press designed for volume book production. It uses the same frame and paper path design, though wider at 1,372mm [54in] and printing in black only. This is “a new paradigm for book printing, fitting with how books are being manufactured today” according to HP PageWide’s global publishing segment manager Ashley Gordon.
The format is familiar to book manufacturers with web presses; it will print on the same papers and deliver the same sort of signatures with the same numbers of pages thanks to the Magnum Flexbook III or Manroland Goss Formerline folder. Both devices can cope with variable cutoffs, which is not feasible for a web offset press with set cylinders and cutoffs. “Our new press will hit 70% of trade book formats,” says Gordon, “printing 5,234 240pp books an hour in a 6x9in format an hour.”
The target is clearly the book printers currently using ageing litho presses and finding that post Covid, the world of publishing has changed. Digital printing is no longer about printing very small batches of a title on demand, but about what HP is calling “Print to demand”.
This is the idea that publishers are keen to reduce the risks of having shelves of unsold books stored in warehouses because there is no flexibility to print fewer than say 50,000 in the initial run needed for a book’s launch and its first weeks on sale. As recent political memoirs have shown, many will end up in warehouses unsold. This is expensive for publishers.
They also want to avoid over extended supply chains says Gordon with the uncertainty that this entails. The threat of tariffs is also giving US publishers at least further reasons to think hard. And right behind this is the EUDR which may hit the ability of US printers to export to the EU.
Post Covid, there is less insistence that every edition of a book has to use exactly the same paper because immediately after the pandemic just finding any paper was tough enough. There is some flexibility, provided the chosen paper has the same calliper and same opacity. to work with locally sourced papers. This stipulation allows the original artwork to be shared because the spine widths will remain the same. “It further helps if different printers have the same equipment,” she adds. “Preferably HP equipment.”
Publishers enjoyed rising demand from online sales during Covid, which led to a build up of inventories followed by a crash when lockdowns ended with stocks at high levels, leading to payment of taxes on these assets. Now publishers want to cut their capital costs by reducing stock levels.
Gordon says: “As a consequence they are switching to smaller warehouses and first runs are coming down from 50,000 to below 20,000 in order to reduce risk. This is followed by lots of early and frequent reprints, perhaps ordering 7-8,000 units with a seven-day turnaround.
“We are also seeing Amazon confirm orders closer and closer to publication date, so publishers are having to manage these orders with less than six weeks visibility ahead.”
BookTok is another factor that publishers need to contend with. A recommendation for an old book – Dostoyevsky’s White Nights is a recent example – can lead to an entirely unpredicted surge in demand, and a need for a rapid reprint. Publishers, says Gordon, are looking for reliable partners that can respond quickly, not for orders of 500 units at a time, but for 5,000 or 10,000. Printers have to be able to handle this flexibility, to be able to move seamlessly between digital and analogue printing.
“Publishers want to work with a single supplier and are demanding their suppliers have a digital option. If not, they warn, we will walk away from you. In addition there is pressure to increase sustainability and reduce waste all round.”
This is where HP is positioning the new press. It is effectively a digital workhorse for mid volume trade books that replaces a litho workhorse that has evolved into a carthorse by comparison: slow to run and unable to offer the flexibility that is wanted. The T500 is scheduled to be introduced in the first quarter of next year giving the supplier time to educate the target market.
HP will probably find more success in Europe with this machine than the T4250 where the configuration suits North America with longer runs and a greater population than in Europe. However, if the mono press is targeted as a replacement for the multitude of Timsons or other book presses that are still in use across the world, the T4250 can find a market in replacing web offset presses with or without Scitex heads that are producing direct mail volumes. These machines are no longer in the first flush of their youth, so provided that HP can get the package price right, adopting inkjet could be an attractive proposition, financially as well as commercially, for printers whose experience of inkjet print has been restricted to shorter runs and smaller volumes.
These machines are coming up for replacement and HP is now in position to engage in serious discussions with a new crop of printers about expansion of inkjet’s role.
