Canon has made some improvements to its ProStream 1000 continuous feed inkjet press, as demonstrated at the Hunkeler Innovation Days, and announced the first sale to the Nordic region.
The ProStream 1000 was originally launched at the last HID show in 2017. It’s a twin-engined single pass inkjet that uses a pigmented polymer ink set to print to offset coated stocks. It offers 1200 dpi resolutions and runs at 80mpm.
There’s a new optional Inline Quality Control system, which is built around a high-speed camera. This gives feedback on the print quality based on dedicated detection patterns and automatically compensates for problems, such as blocked nozzles or colour density. Canon also claims to have improved sharpness for vectors, linear, inverse or micro text and edges. In addition, Canon has made improvements to the paper transport and drying station so that the ProStream can now handle heavier papers up to 300gsm.
These improvements are based on feedback from customers. Canon now has seven of these presses installed in Europe, with an eight due to be installed in March at the Finnish company Otava Bookprinting Ltd, part of Otava Group. This company will be the first ProStream 1000 customer in the Nordic region. The company has a turnover of over €300m and publishes more than 600 new titles annually.
Marko Silventoinen, Managing Director, Otava Bookprinting comments, “Traditionally we only produced books with offset, but, with changing customer trends, we were no longer able to predict book volumes and struggled to respond quickly to changing customer demands. We therefore decided to investigate the opportunities with a number of digital print technology providers.” He adds that it was important to be able to use exactly the same papers as used in offset production.
Silventoinen explains: “As a business operating for more than 125 years, we were looking for a solution that could help us modernise our publishing model and move to on-demand production. Currently, our soft-cover books take 10 days from order to delivery and hard covers take 15. Our aim with the Océ ProStream 1000 is to deliver books within 48 hours. But shorter delivery times come with their own challenges and we don’t want to have lots of books in stock. We currently have direct access to data from a number of bookstores and can use this data to better predict future book volumes. Our ideal future would be one in which every book we produce is already sold.”
Canon also showed off two sheetfed presses at the Hunkeler Innovations Days, the inkjet VarioPrint i300 and the dry toner ImagePress C10000VP, all of which were running Prisma workflow solutions.
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