It is long and black and has been promoted by a dragon. It has been under development for at least five years and under consideration for a few more. It is, Ricoh hopes, going to be a game changer. This is the Z75, a B2 sheetfed press using four inkjet arrays to print work that cannot be handled by toner or offset presses and equally work that has hitherto been printed on offset machines.
In Ricoh’s wilder fantasies this press becomes the digital GTO, the press defines the transition from offset to inkjet just as the venerable Heidelberg press defined the transition from letterpress to litho. Instead of coming out on top, Heidelberg this time is under some threat. And it knows this.
Equally Ricoh knows that to achieve anything like this degree of success it needs more than a combination of iron, steel and electronics. And in the background it has been accumulating the perennial with expertise from both the digital and offset sectors to support the push to market.
It has also teamed up with business consultancy and training company Strategyzer to create market awareness courses for printers. While these are not exclusively about inkjet printing, they will help printers identify the new opportunities that inkjet creates and to understand the dynamics of their own business and that of their customers.
There will be new workflow and application tools as well as business tools for more accurate estimating and automated workflow.
It amounts to a full Ricoh eco system with the new inkjet printing press at its heart.
There have been stories about development of a B2 inkjet press since Drupa 2016. The answer has always been that ‘we will bring a machine to market when we think we can be successful’. And when cost, quality, performance align with market need.
The recruitment drive has included the appointment of Mark Hinder, directly from the KM1 project team at Konica Minolta, to join Ricoh Europe in a business development role. Jurgen Freier, with Heidelberg, Polar and HP Indigo on his CV, has had an executive role while others have joined from Xerox, HP and most recently with David Farnsworth, becoming key accounts manager for the UK from Screen Europe.
Internally Ricoh has also shuffled the pack. There is a new Graphic Communications Group which brings all toner and inkjet printing activities, including the Z75, under one umbrella. “We are confident in the graphic arts market,” says Eef de Ridder, Ricoh Europe executive vice president. “It is a very resilient market and we are confident that it will be bouncing back very quickly.”
It will not be bouncing back in the same shape as previously. The series of lockdowns because of Covid-19 have by all forecasts accelerated changes that were already underway. Trends towards personalised products, towards ecommerce, automation to reduce operating costs have all been stimulated and the combination of print and digital channels to deliver a marketing message is better understood. All plays to the strengths of digital printing and opens the door to more productive digital presses.
“Over the next ten years, digital print volumes will increase dramatically,” says Sander Sondaal, director of commercial print sales for Ricoh Europe. “Currently just 5.4% of commercial print pages are printed digitally. That will increase to 9.6 % of the total print volume, which will decline by 2.1%. This amounts to a compound growth rate of 4.6% and means an extra 700 billion pages to be printed digitally.”
As with all projections there are caveats and the precise numbers may be very different to this. Another pandemic will throw everything out. But whatever the accuracy, print is moving to digital platforms and to inkjet which does not suffer the limitations on speed and format that bind electrophotographic processes. “Toner is very good at short runs, it is very capable on al kinds of media, but the high running costs mean a low limit before offset becomes more cost effective per page,” says Sondaal.
“Inkjet bridges the gap. The Z75 can be a complement or an alternative to an offset press. It has the same quality as offset and can print on a wide range of media, not only by size but on all types of media. A printer would not need to keep separate stocks of the papers a customer is used to.
“We expect it to print a lot of stop/start actions because of short print tuns and to handle a lot of data because versioning and variable data printing are expected to increase. All this is possible on the Z75. It is a function packed powerhouse.”
The first beta site, probably close to the Ricoh inkjet development centre in Boulder, Colorado, will be made this summer. A first machine in Europe will arrive at the Customer Experience Centre in Telford before the end of the year and commercial installations are timed to follow in the middle part of next year. This is a timetable that is driven by the technology, not by Covid.
There is a risk that printers may be reluctant to wait their turn and will instead switch for the HP Indigo 12000 and 100k, the Fujifilm Jetpress or the Konica Minolta KM1/Komori iS29 as already proven machines in the B2 digital print space. Ricoh wants to ensure that it gets this right. There are unlikely to be second chances in this market. If it is seen to fail it is a long wait to get back in. The Z75 is simply too important to Ricoh to fail.
The first version will be a four-colour machine capable of printing without priming on coated and uncoated papers to 400gsm at 4,500sph. It will print on a maximum format of 585x750mm down to a minimum of A3 and on seven sizes in between. US versions will have a different range of sizes. It prints at full speed (half the output when perfecting) up to 300gsm and slows to 3,000sph above this and runs at half the pace when duplexing. Part of the beta test programme will be about testing these limits and proving that the press is as robust as Ricoh claims it will be.
There will be an emphasis on self and remote service. Inkjet generally has proved to be a resident technology, but even so down time must be minimised which means that users will do low level maintenance and component replacement themselves. Remote monitoring will surely be mandatory. “We recognise the growing importance of remote and self maintenance,” says Tim Taylor, global marketing director for Ricoh inkjet production solutions. “We want to transition as many people to feel comfortable with that type of service as possible.”
Construction of the press is far removed from the company’s toner machines which can be wheeled into position. The Z75 is something that will have to be lifted into place. It comprises a cast iron and steel framework to prevent vibrations affecting print quality and to stand up to the rigours of 24/7 production. There are also elements from the offset world, and if jointly developed by Heidelberg, Ricoh is not saying. While feeder and delivery are easy to identify, Ricoh is keeping quite about how the paper is moved through the drying section and back to the print section and to the delivery.
Ricoh has put a 2.6 million B2 impressions a month maximum duty cycle on the machine which even the heaviest users are unlikely to reach. Running non stop for every hour of a 30 day month amounts to a theoretical maximum of 3.25 million impressions: a two shift six day a week pattern results in 1.7 million B2 sheets, not allowing for stops between jobs or changes of paper.
A digital front end developed by EFI will link to a Ricoh workflow that will be developed for the press, probably based on Ricoh Process Director software. It will also integrate to other Ricoh applications like Marcoms Central and Avanti MIS, but will also integrate with third party workflow systems that a printer might have.
The first versions will feed from two 2,500 sheet capacity bins with vacuum feeders delivering a sheet to a set of rollers which position the sheet for the vacuum print drum. It is fed on the short edge, something that reduces the width of the inkjet array and saves cost. Apart from the lack of conventional grip edge on the sheet there is nothing for printers to worry about, says Taylor.
Cameras, sensors and the fierce vacuum eliminate the problems associated with portrait printing in the offset word and should ensure pin sharp registration, with image adjustment on the second side should the paper’s dimensions change during print and drying.
Once off the drum, the sheet is conveyed through its newly designed and still secret drying section with lessons learned from the experience of the Pro VC70000 continuous feed press. The sheet can either be turned to be printed on the reverse side or passes to the delivery stack. There is only one on the first version of the machine, though additional stackers are likely to be offered.
Ricoh is already talking about taking fully dry sheets from the delivery into finishing. The feasibility of this will depend on the effectiveness of the drying system. If it dries paper as well as ink, users may well be advised to let the paper regain a moisture content before finishing, particularly PUR binding which relies on water content in the paper to be effective.
The version that will be available next summer will have a CMYK array. The printheads that Ricoh is using are an adaptation of its latest piezo design with a robust stainless steel nozzle plate at 1200x1200dpi resolution. These are optimised to fire a new aqueous ink which has a heavy pigment load to cut the water content, so assist drying, and to maximise brightness. Nozzle cleaning is automated and takes place between jobs. Ricoh uses dynamic drop optimisation in its inkjet presses to maintain colour consistency and nozzle replacement compensation to avoid tell-tale streaking.
The press was on course for a prelaunch introduction at Drupa 2020 and then at the postponed show this year. A teaser social media campaign has stoked interest and speculation into what many hope can be the ideal digital press.
There is no pricing associated with the machine, either for the capital investment nor for service and consumables. The likely model will be a combination of monthly service charge and lease and a separate charge for the ink. It will be too much of a risk for Ricoh to levy a per page click charge. Because of the higher output than any toner, any minor error would be magnified to the detriment of one side or the other.
Ricoh hints at an average per page cost that is significantly lower than toner. According to Sondaal, it will be “affordable”.
“This is a press that should complement or be an alternative to an offset press,” he adds. “The quality is a match for offset, supporting the same range of media so a printer does not need to keep different stocks, and with the high production uptime that customers are used to from offset.
While Ricoh is not saying where the established offset elements of the design like this have come from. However, the company is a partner with Heidelberg on its toner presses which Heidelberg sells and the two collaborated on elements of the Pro C9200 design.
Heidelberg has ceased its own inkjet developments with the end of the Primefire 106, but has retained the inkjet knowledge and could be interested in this machine as a way to satisfy its customers and a stepping stone back into inkjet printing.
A decision like this from Heidelberg would be welcomed by Ricoh. Not only would it endorse the quality of the technology, it would open up a vast customer base that the Japanese company would struggle to reach let alone convince.
The DFE is a new design based on Fiery technology with a large touch panel display and able to support variable data printing as well as offering connectivity to a wide range of workflows in operation across the industry. This is not a press confined to the Ricoh eco system.
The developer anticipates an average user will produce 750,000-1.25 million sheets a month. Above this, for static pages at least, the company recognises that offset, particularly with the benefit of instant dry LED UV technology, can be more effective. The R75 will not target these applications. It is for value add applications, where needing personalisation, triggered by an online order for photobooks, for marketing collateral or a campaign with multiple versions amounting to a sequence of ultra short run jobs.
According to Ricoh’s market research these are the jobs that all printers will have to cope with in future. Says Sondaal: “The typical user will be the printer that sees this opportunity. He will be a B2 printer already so is familiar with workflows and finishing and who needs to optimise productivity alongside the offset press or wants to replace it. He may also be a printer that no longer has a skilled press operator needed to run the litho machine. He is a customer looking to add value, if only from the cost/performance perspective. This printer needs to want to add value.”
Ricoh’s challenge is firstly to find these companies and second to persuade them that the R75 is worth waiting a couple of years to get their hands on. The problems it faces stem from the nature of the print business Sondaal outlines. Many B2 printers are conservative by nature and tend to follow rather lead with technology. Secondly most of these have seen balance sheets obliterated by the effects of pandemic. However desirable this press, however good it turns out to be (very good indeed we suspect), the target commercial printers may struggle to be able to afford to buy it, at least until pandemic is a long way behind.
