Everything you need to know about Digital Printing – part 5
Everything you need to know about Digital Printing – part 5 – 8th July 2009
Digital colour production print was so attractive that other companies wanted to build their own. In particular Xerox, which had been the biggest seller of Xeikons, announced its own in-house system, the sheetfed DocuColor 2000 series, at drupa 2000. Fast, flexible and affordable, these Docucolors soon outsold all the other digital colour press installations put together. This was fortunate for Xerox, which was going through alarming financial problems at the time as its photocopier business dried up.
The Docucolor 2000 series was built by the Fuji-Xerox alliance, but the company also had an all US project underway, which was revealed in 2001 as the high volume iGen 3, for 90 A4 pages per minute (a 110 pages per minute version followed). This shipped about a year later. Last year, the company announced iGen4 with, the same nominal top speed but with engineering improvements that should allow it to hit significantly higher monthly volumes.
Meantime Nexpress, an alliance of Kodak and Heidelberg, was coming to market with a fast sheetfed digital colour machine, the 2100, for 70 pages per minute. This was demonstrated at drupa 2000 and started reaching users 18 months later. Nexpress sold well and has further developed with faster models up to the 100 page per minute 3000 introduced in 2007.
Meanwhile, Xerox naturally lost interest in reselling Xeikons after 2000, and the DC2000 series was eating up the market for the other resellers. With sales tailing off, Xeikon hit financial troubles late in 2001, but was rescued by Punch International, a Belgian engineering company that already made many of the hardware components for the presses. With new capital Xeikon revived and by 2004 was able to launch a radical new generation high speed, high quality model called the 5000, which remains the foundation of today’s range. In 2008 it announced its fastest machine to date, the 8000.
To be continued…
See part one of this blog on digital thinking here
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See Part 12 of this blog on Print finishing, See also our Blog on Spot UV Varnishing
Print Buying Direct and School Prospectus Made Easy are both brands of parent company – The Printing House Ltd of Crewe, Cheshire, UK. Keep visiting both websites for details of our latest offers and promotions. For more information School Prospectus including School Prospectus Design or School Prospectus Printing (we also specialise in college prospectus) see our www.schoolprospectus.info website
Have a look at our Newsletters webpage for help and assistance with writing and designing your newsletter. It deals with, company newsletters, college newsletters, school newsletters and employee newsletters in particluar. Our blog often focuses on newsletters and we have a page which specifically helps with newsletters as a marketing tool.
TOP TIP: Add that feel of quality to your company brochure by first applying Matt Lamination then a Spot UV Varnish. The UV Varnishing actually ‘lifts’ your pictures to give them a glossy impact.
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One of the mainstays at Print Buying Direct is Leaflets. We are experts at Leaflet Design & Leaflet Printing.
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