Ricoh is ramping up the prelaunch marketing for its B2 Z75 sheetfed inkjet press following a hiatus of several months.
The press was expected to be at a US beta site before the end of last year and to take pride of place at the refurbished Customer Experience Centre in Telford ready for prelaunch and indepth demonstrations ahead of a general commercial release later this year. The timetable appears to have slipped a little, but Ricoh is intent on getting this press right rather come to market and have to conduct beta testing in public. The timing of the next step in the marketing programme suggests that the moment is coming.
Additional video and background content has been served to a dedicated web page featuring the CGI dragon that has been used to symbolise the press. The new site features a full length side view of the machine for the first time. It is encased in black or dark grey panels and silver highlights. Apart from the delivery stack, everything is fully enclosed, from two paper bins onwards.
These bins hold sheets of any material from 60-400gsm, in seven sizes from A3 to 585x737mm. It prints on standard offset litho papers without coating and using extended gamut aqueous inks, which the company says do not suffer from unwanted rub off. Nor will production slow with heavier papers as happens with toner presses.
The paper is fed portrait fashion with sucker pick up and air blowers to separate sheets. The sheet is positioned for accuracy of register between a pair of rollers before passing to the vacuum drum. The press is using an adjustable vacuum to hold the sheet in place and to move it from feeder to delivery. This enables the press to move sheets at higher speed than has been necessary previously.
There are three vacuum sections on the imaging drum, so like the design of the KM1/iS29, three sheets are in place on the drum at any one time.
In a patent (US 11,220,410) filed to protect the vacuum sheet handling system, Ricoh explains that the device can have up to six printheads, offering white, metallics (gold or silver) or a coating in addition to CMYK. This is not likely to be implemented on the first version of the Z75.
The description says there is also provision for application of a primer, though this should not be necessary for most papers as Ricoh has declared it can print on standard litho papers without a pre treatment.
There is no information about how the sheet is turned for printing on the reverse. The drying section uses multiple heat sources to ensure a fully dry sheet in the delivery or for printing on the reverse side.
The press uses Ricoh’s 12,000dpi stainless steel temperature controlled piezo heads firing the aqueous ink using variable droplet sizes and technology to avoid clumping effects and produce high definition sharp edges and text. It is controlled by a Fiery DFE developed for the Z75. This also monitors the status of the press and connects to a digital workflow.
The claims for the machine necessarily lie in marketing phrases rather than from real life feedback. Thus, says Ricoh, the press is filling a long standing gap in the market and operates at trailblazing speeds. Speed has previously been put at 4,500sph in single-side mode, which is sheet for sheet slower than a B2 Indigo running EPM and slower too than the Fujifilm Jetpress 750HS, which reduces resolution to 1200x600dpi to achieve a higher throughput. Ricoh is likely to be able to replicate this approach, though again this is unlikely to be offered at launch.
Ricoh’s messaging is hard to square with the claim that this “new B2 sheetfed press will transform the print industry as we know it”. The hyperbole aside, Ricoh argues that falling run lengths combined with an increasing need for personalisation or at least versioning, expand the opportunity for digital print. It is “a bridge between affordability and high productivity and media versatility”, the company claims. Any means of checking this reside with the first tranche of prospects who have been kept abreast of developments and under NDA. They have been discussing the business model both for Ricoh and for their own businesses.
