The idea that high speed inkjet printing can one day be an acceptable match for offset litho quality on the same papers that offset printers and their customers are used to, is no longer just an idea. That day has arrived. Canon, Screen, Ricoh, Kodak, Xerox and HP have joined Indigo and Xeikon in being able to print litho quality on reels of standard offset papers. That is the easy part.
So far inkjet has been able to take over most transactional printing applications; it is becoming an essential process for printing mono and some colour books; it can work for newspapers; now what? The concept of transpromo has not taken hold, inkjet inks are more expensive and speeds relative to a 64pp Lithoman are generally slow. There is no queue of magazine printers anxious to grasp a paradigm shifting opportunity, still less the general commercial printer.
The inkjet revolution is going to take time. Most of all it is going to take applications, those new printed products that are perhaps mutations of existing jobs but which as yet do not exist. Technology suppliers need to convince printers who need to challenge the perceptions that their clients have. And that is going to be the toughest nut to crack. Canon’s slogan, adorning its ProStream inkjet press in Switzerland last week, is ‘Unleash the Print’. But before you can let the dog off the leash, you have to train it first.
Inkjet printing works. What happens now?
The idea that high speed inkjet printing can one day be an acceptable match for offset litho quality on the same papers that offset printers and their customers are used to, is no longer just an idea. That day has arrived. Canon, Screen, Ricoh, Kodak, Xerox and HP have joined Indigo and Xeikon in being able to print litho quality on reels of standard offset papers. That is the easy part.
So far inkjet has been able to take over most transactional printing applications; it is becoming an essential process for printing mono and some colour books; it can work for newspapers; now what? The concept of transpromo has not taken hold, inkjet inks are more expensive and speeds relative to a 64pp Lithoman are generally slow. There is no queue of magazine printers anxious to grasp a paradigm shifting opportunity, still less the general commercial printer.
The inkjet revolution is going to take time. Most of all it is going to take applications, those new printed products that are perhaps mutations of existing jobs but which as yet do not exist. Technology suppliers need to convince printers who need to challenge the perceptions that their clients have. And that is going to be the toughest nut to crack. Canon’s slogan, adorning its ProStream inkjet press in Switzerland last week, is ‘Unleash the Print’. But before you can let the dog off the leash, you have to train it first.
Gareth Ward
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