The long-awaited roll-out of Benny Landa's nanographic printing technology is starting to gather pace, as the company ships its first B1 inkjet perfecting press.
New York commercial printer Mercury Print Productions is the destination for the world's first Landa S10P. The 50 year old company currently runs multiple B1 Heidelberg offset presses, a trio of Kodak Prosper inkjet presses, as well as sheetfed digital systems.
The Landa S10P prints at up to 6,500sph in straight mode, or half that 3,250sph in perfecting. However there is a high speed option, which doubles the speeds. The S10P can be configured with four to eight-colours.
Benny Landa launched the nanographic concept at drupa 2012, promising offset quality on offset stocks at offset speeds, but with digital printing, so no plates, no make-ready and variable data. So impressive was his presentation that some 400 printers stumped up $10,000 each for a place in the queue, including several Australian outfits.
However since then the technical challenges of nanographic printing (micro particles), particularly the physics and the chemistry, have meant progress has been slower than expected.
Landa currently has two beta installations of its straight printing S10 models, at Graphica Bezalel in Israel and Edelmann in Germany. A Swiss commercial, packaging and display printer is currently installing an S10.