Digital Digest: Project Niagara Headlines 'Canon for Business' Event
POING, GERMANY—To demonstrate its numerous printing systems to the European market, Canon recently held a two-week event at its Customer Experience Center in Germany, called Canon for Business 2014. More than 2,600 customers visited the facility, where they attended seminars and watched demos of Canon's wide-format, cutsheet and continuous-feed digital output devices.
A spacious facility with high ceilings, the Customer Experience Center here is reminiscent of a trade show setting. Rollfed equipment is clustered in one area with cutsheet and wide-format printers together in another section, separated by a large open area used as an auditorium and cafeteria. Stretching along one wall is the impressive Océ InfiniStream folding carton press, which uses liquid toner technology and boasts the productivity of a sheetfed offset press.
On the first day of Canon for Business 2014, Canon launched several color and monochrome printers for the European market and offered updates on Project Niagara, Canon's much-anticipated cutsheet color inkjet printer. Announced during the event were:
• The Océ ImageStream 3500 continuous-feed color inkjet press, which can can print on offset coated paper stocks at 525 ft./min. at 1,200x600 dpi. It uses flexible droplet modulation for even higher perceived image resolution.
• The Océ VarioStream 4000 monochrome simplex/duplex continuous-feed press. The toner-based device has a speed range between 180 to 1,200 pages per minute (ppm).
• The Océ VarioStream 7110 continuous-feed toner printer, printing at 108 ppm simplex, for entry-level transactional printing.
• The light-production imagePRESS C800 Series cutsheet press (available in the U.S. later this year), which prints 80 ppm on paper up to 220 gsm using new CV (Consistently Vivid) toner. Compact Registration Technology ensures that every image is placed in the same location, every time, on every sheet. A 32-beam Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser unit with multi-exposure technology delivers 2,400x2,400 dpi resolution.
Though not physically at the event, Project Niagara received a good deal of attention. At a display area with the machine's footprint outlined on the floor, attendees watched a video demonstration of the cutsheet inkjet technology and got a chance to question specialists about the product, which will print 300 A4 images a minute (on standard offset media) when it debuts next year. It will use Canon ColorStream inkjet print head technology and Canon-developed aqueous inks. Niagara will be targeted at applications like transactional materials, direct mail, books and manuals.
"We're building Niagara to produce good quality on standard media," remarked David Preskett, Professional Print director at Canon Europe, during a press conference.
Select visitors also got to tour Canon's Poing manufacturing facility, where employees assemble products like Arizona wide-format printers, the VarioStream 7000/8000 and the ColorStream 3000. Some attendees were also given a glimpse of a next-generation Canon color technology, still in development. Canon officials noted that the company invests 8 percent of its sales revenue in research and development worldwide, and registered more than 3,800 patents last year. PI
Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 170 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.
