Press Release Almanac: 17 April 2008
As drupa draws closer, so too does a swag of new releases. Here’s your chance to keep up-to-date with the latest industry news.
Goss International demonstrates M-600 Folia press prior to shipment to drupa
Baldwin announces new drupa line up
GMG presents new and advanced products at drupa 2008
Konica Minolta streamlines production with the new Printgroove Workflow Suite
Fuji Xerox Printers takes colour printing to the next level
Goss International demonstrated its all-new M-600 Folia press system to sales representatives and dealers at its facility in Montataire, France on April 2. The press will be in full operation at the company's stand in hall 17 at the drupa show.
Announced publicly in March, the M-600 Folia press is designed as a high-productivity web offset alternative for producing up to B1-format sheeted products. The system utilizes M_600 printing units, sheetfed inks and new sheeter technology developed in partnership with VITS to print on coated stocks without a dryer.
The press printed 30,000 high-quality perfected sheets per hour during the pre-drupa demonstration at the Goss International facility.
"This was a very tough audience that has to believe in the press and be able to promote it with confidence," explains Jean Claude Pautrat, product management director for Goss International. "Their satisfaction with the demonstration was a key milestone. We are excited about going to drupa with another truly innovative Goss technology that creates new opportunities for our customers."
Baldwin Technology Inc will be showing its largest ever range of press accessory and control technologies at drupa 2008, Hall 16 Stand C15.
In addition to developing new systems, the acquisition of manufacturers Oxy-Dry and Hildebrand Systeme, plus alliances with leading suppliers, such as Robatech, FALK and Thermal Care/AWS, has expanded Baldwin's product portfolio significantly during the last two years.
Today, Baldwin provides the most comprehensive press accessory and control range in the world for the sheet-fed, commercial web, newspaper and semi-commercial markets. New blanket cleaning technology for the sheet-fed, commercial web, newspaper and semicommercial sectors will include ImpactFusion F, which has been designed to provide minimum wastage and make-ready times. ImpactFusion F offers the choice of using either a dry cloth with cleaning agent or Baldwin's PREPAC cloth, which is pre-impregnated with a virtually VOC-free cleaning agent.
Baldwin will be launching new brush blanket cleaning technologies, including
ProTech 2 NP for newspaper and semi-commercial printers. Baldwin will be showing several new fluid and temperature control systems including the CombiLiner ECO, a new ink temperature control and dampening solution preparation device for sheet-fed and commercial web offset presses that provides significant reductions in energyconsumption and running costs. The new BasicLiner unit for the sheet-fed and commercial web offset sectors offers highly economic dampening solution preparation and recycling.
Baldwin will be introducing an ink roller cleaning system for use in the newspaper, semi-commercial, commercial and sheet-fed markets that allows simultaneous cleaning of all ink units on a press, while visitors will be able to hear about a wide range of advanced filtration systems plus new web catching and in-line finishing systems for the commercial web, newspaper and semi-commercial sectors.
Baldwin will introduce exciting new additions to its award-winning, environmentally efficient line of PREPAC consumables for automatic cleaning systems. With the drupa release of PREPAC E, Plus and Extreme technologies, Baldwin can offer both high performance PREPAC solutions for hybrid, UV and textured cylinder applications as well as new cost-effective PREPAC cleaning for traditional newspaper, commercial web and sheet-fed printing applications.
There's a lot going on at GMG in both the software and the media sector. GMG has concentrated totally on Drupa by developing new products and advanced versions of existing ones. New products will be presented in both the software and the media sector.
Visitors to the exhibition can expect a major advance in the field of proofing. The new versions of ColorProof, DotProof, and FlexoProof focus on additional functions, even easier handling, and intuitive support of the various industry standards. That is just one of the highlights at the GMG booth - not only for existing GMG users, but for all businesses that need to produce color-accurate contract proofs reliably, simply and repeatably. The software solutions feature the new Adobe PDF Print Engine technology.
In the color management sector, users will be able to see "ColorMaster in a Box" for the first time. Based on GMG ColorServer, this is an attractive product for companies - such as advertising agencies or prepress businesses - that want to keep their data in the RGB color space for as long as possible. Only at the very last minute, when the printing process has been definitively defined, are the RGB data separated into the required CMYK target color space using GMG ColorServer. Vector data can be created directly in the GMG ColorMaster color space and then converted into the target color space in preconfigured hot folders by CMYK-to-CMYK conversion using high-quality GMG 4D profiles. GMG supplies predefined settings for all important target color spaces, making it very easy for the user to set up an automated workflow. In addition, GMG ColorMaster offers a color space that covers all common printing gamuts, and is also available as an ICC profile for retouching images in Photoshop.
One completely new product is GMG Connect. This software solution permits simple integration of GMG products in Prinergy, Esko and Dalim workflow environments. The software is additionally of great benefit for efficient remote proofing, enabling cross-platform checking of print job statuses via the Internet, for example.
In the media sector, the successful GMG media offering is being expanded to include three new papers. The individual products are a new 140 gram matt paper, a 250 gram gloss paper, and a new 76 gram newsprint paper.
"Since Drupa 2004 marked the start of four years of continuous growth, we have very high hopes for this year's Drupa, too. We expect that our new and advanced products will enable us to attract new customers for GMG products, especially from the printing sector, in addition to our existing clientele. GMG will be exhibiting on a 260 sqm booth at Drupa (Hall 8b, Booth A11), where the GMG staff and our authorized retail partners will be more than willing to help and advice visitors," says Robert Weihing, CEO of GMG GmbH & Co. KG.
GMG products in Australia are distributed exclusively thru Kayell Australia.
Konica Minolta announces the launch of its new, award-winning print workflow solution, PrintGroove. The software ensures a simple, streamlined process from job submission to billing and shipping, which results in a seamless link between Konica Minolta's production printing systems, the bizhub PRO series.
Already recognised with a BERTL's BEST Award for Innovation, PrintGroove consists of three modules, POD Queue, POD Serve, and POD Guide, that integrate and automate production printing environments. Collectively these modules are designed to cater for the special needs of complex production printing environments such as central reprographic departments (CRDs) or small to mid sized commercial printers.
"POD Serve and POD Guide help to simplify work processes in production printing," says David Procter, Konica Minolta National Manager - Production Print. "Together with POD Queue, they provide a complete solution for a streamlined process reaching from job submission to billing. Users can conveniently create customised workflows - overall, ease of use is an important characteristic of all PrintGroove POD suite modules."
PrintGroove POD Serve is a web-based job submission tool acting as an online store front. It is available 24 hours every day of the year and is accessible either via the Internet or a corporate intranet. There, users can submit print jobs as well as create and customise job ticket settings. Any file format can be handled easily, including graphics, photos, presentations and multimedia. POD Serve offers real-time job status verification and optional email notification.
PrintGroove POD Guide is the management module of the PrintGroove POD suite. Via job ticket management, users can control the complete production process at any stage, from submission through production to delivery and invoicing. Unlimited production steps and stations can be customised to fulfil the required job. Control of the production floor has been made easy with print schedule management and job tracking at the operator's disposal.
POD Queue is the queue management and clustering tool and ensures the appropriate devices are selected for the print job. This module can be used to cluster (load balance) black and white bizhub PRO printers as well as providing a powerful colour split feature. POD Queue can be used as a standalone product to simplify job delivery to any in-house print facility by being distributed as a print driver. All jobs are submitted to the print facility in a known PDF format, from the print driver, without the need for a specialised PDF creation tool.
POD Ready, the fourth and final module of Konica Minolta's PrintGroove POD suite will be released at drupa 2008. POD Ready will automate a print product's make-ready process, allowing Konica Minolta bizhub PRO operators to handle sophisticated production tasks themselves. To see Printgrove in action visit Konica Minolta drupa 2008, Stand A26 Hall 9
Fuji Xerox Printers today announced the launch of the DocuPrint C2255, the world's-first A3 sized printer with Self Scanning Light Emitting Diode (S-LED) technology capable of brilliant colour reproduction at 1200x2400 dpi. Built for mid to largeworkgroups and graphics departments, the DocuPrint C2255 is designed to improve productivity by producing high quality large format business documents.
The S-LED print head technology in the DocuPrint C2255 has fewer moving parts, making it quieter to operate, improving the printer's reliability and reducing its energy consumption. The DocuPrint C2255 is capable of reproducing colour pages at speeds of up to 25 ppm (pages per minute) in colour and monochrome.
Developed with the needs of graphics departments in mind, the DocuPrint C2255 has a Micro Accurate Control Screen (MACS) digital screening technology which controls pixel production based on image density. This feature, which is normally found in high-end printers, produces pages with smooth gradation and better highlight reproduction.
Other key features in the DocuPrint C2255 include:
* Environmental Choice Australia Mark certified
* First Page Out Time of less than 8.3 seconds
* Fast duplex printing at 20ppm colour and monochrome
* Large paper handling capacity of up to 3,480 sheets
* Handles paper sizes from A6 to SRA3
* Multi-platform networking - 100Base-TX/10Base-T, USB 2.0, IPv6
and Adobe PostScript 3
* International Energy Star certified with the lowest power
consumption in its class
Adrian Johnson, General Manager of Fuji Xerox Printers Australia and New Zealand said, "Fuji Xerox Printers has once again demonstrated its innovation in imaging solutions for enterprises with the DocuPrint C2255. The DocuPrint C2255 is the perfect solution for mid to large workgroups. It combines fast printing speeds, quality print output and has features that support office productivity such as the ability to support multiple networking environments, security and enterprise application printing."
The DocuPrint C2255 offers Out-of-Box capability for enterprise applications with print drivers that are compatible with SAP R/3 and Citrix Presentation Server. Its in-built security features include print user control, hard disk overwrite, secure watermarks and a hidden Universally Unique Identifier mark to detect copied documents. The DocuPrint C2255 can be linked to an IC card reader to provide an additional authentication layer allowing bill back and Pay-Per-Print accounting for the printing of documents.
Besides energy efficiency, the DocuPrint C2255 was designed and produced with the environment in mind. This printer is manufactured using biomass-plastic and is lead and halogen-free. The DocuPrint C2255 uses an Emulsion Aggregate High Grade (EA-HG) toner which emits up to 35 percent less carbon dioxide in its production when compared to conventional toners.
The DocuPrint C2255 is available in June 2008 at a recommended retail price of AU$3,960 including GST through authorised resellers. For further information, visit www.fujixeroxprinters.com.au