The first UK user of the Heidelberg Jetfire 50 is unlikely to receive a press until the second quarter of 2025, in Heidelberg’s next financial year.
The inkjet press, built on the same platform as the Canon iX3200, was a surprise introduction at Drupa. It is expected to prove highly popular, offering greater up time and productivity than the Versafire toner offerings in the same format, and a viable replacement for B3 litho.
The inkjet press will have a Heidelberg front end, linking it directly to a Prinect production management system. This will be capable of deciding, with the help of AI, which is the ideal press to handle any job based on run length, press availability and delivery among the factors. This will incorporate Prinect Touch-free, a version of the workflow that fires jobs at the digital press with no manual intervention.
The correct sheet, or sheets, will be pulled from the appropriate cassette as required. Each feeder module has four paper drawers with the press able to operate with three modules. This will keep what Paul Chamberlain calls “a very hungry beast” in full operation. If the press waits more than 40 seconds between jobs, the heads retreat to a capping station and will need to print six sheets when wakened from this slumber. “As with any inkjet press, the more you print, the more the press likes it,” he says. “This is why Prinect Touch-Free is important.”
The first presses, as beta machines, have been installed in Switzerland. Along with Germany and Poland, Swiss printers will take up the first wave of installations. “The UK machines will come in the second wave alongside Benelux and the US,” says Chamberlain.
He has been carrying out research among Speedmaster customers who are also running the inkjet press. “I have been asking about production issues, say whether a short or long grain presentation has any effect,” he says. “Users are telling us they have a 90% uptime which is why we need the Touch-Free workflow to load job after job.”
The press was put through its paces to an audience of UK printers at an open day last week, via a streaming video link to Heidelberg’s showroom in Germany.
Mechanically it is identical to the Canon machine, from sheet checking at the start of press to nozzle checking and correction, a large drying drum and fixation unit, through perfecting to the delivery stack. It is a four-colour press with a fifth inkjet array to apply what Canon calls ColorGrip precisely where the inkjet will land.
The difference lies with the workflow, Heidelberg able to offer Prinect Cockpit to preflight the PDF, making simple corrections automatically and using SignaStation software to handle imposition differences between the different processes along with colour management software to deliver the same results from the different technologies.
