Ricoh is making a presentation theatre the centrepiece of its presence at Drupa. It has dubbed this the Henkakuverse, expanding on the concept of Henkaku that underpins product development and strategic thinking for the company. The term means ‘transformation’ or ‘change’. The House of Henkaku is the on-stand theatre where presentations will highlight the collaboration with print partners that delivers change for their business, or in Ricoh’s words: “Because when we get together, magic and truly happen.” It adds that the “Henkakuverse and its opportunities will be presented in a spectacular way”.
More prosaically the four models of press on show are all new within the last six months. The most powerful is the VC80000, the continuous feed inkjet press that is intended to drive the transformation from litho to inkjet printing for commercial printers. It is a new design, using Ricoh printheads, a Miyakoshi transport and new ink to enable printing on standard offset papers.
The long awaited B2 Pro Z75 inkjet press has been heralded using animations of a dragon and gets to become the Dragon in Ricoh’s product line up. The press is intended to persuade litho printers to consider an inkjet press rather than analogue for a next investment. Ricoh has spent a lot of development effort in ensuring the press overcomes the challenge of printing with water based inks with a new drying system and control systems to manage back to back registration, again on standard offset papers.
It is the first press to be able to claim this. Other inkjet presses with print one side only, on both sides of a smaller sheet or use UV inks to print and dry before printing the reverse of the sheet.
The other new presses are the two toner presses launched at the end of the last year, the Pro C9500 and Pro C7500. These are being call the Jaguars (other members of the big cat family being taken) “roaming the landscape of innovation”.
Those wanting to see Ricoh’s large format inkjet presses should book flights to Munich to visit Fespa. Print samples from these machines will be on hand along with samples from the commercial print presses and from customers as part of a print bar and ‘applications garden’.
AI, workflow automation through the latest versions of TotalFlow Director, Ricoh Supervisor and FusionPro will be the glue linking the presses and prepress.
