Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. (Konica Minolta,) a leader in digital imaging solutions, today announced that it will unveil the latest offerings in its long line of market-leading production printing devices for the commercial print industry – the WEBjet 200D and WEBjet100D continuous feed inkjet presses – at the inkjet Summit 2018 in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, April 9-11.

Paper whiteness is particularly important in markets for which small text and readability is important such as book as well as magazine. For magazine images, the level of OBA’s in the paper can affect color reproduction accuracy of certain colors combinations.

We’ve put together something to keep you thinking about inkjet – an inkjet crossword puzzle. If you’ve been reading our posts you should find this pretty easy. Post a comment to brag if you finish in less than 10 minutes.

Characteristics like brightness, whiteness and shade level of the paper can impact the inkjet color outcomes for your project. Lets talk about how some of the manufactured paper specifications and how brightness can directly affect your color fidelity.

Memjet and Canon have entered into a long-term, global agreement to cross-license their patents around key segments and applications. 

Offset printing satisfies the majority of the production requirements for both catalogs and magazines. As marketers seek to increase ROI, you can start to make the case for shorter runs, versioning, hyper-localization, and personalization and then inkjet printing starts to become interesting.

I had the opportunity to interview Marc Johnson, Marketing Manager Americas with HP on the differences in the line-up of Dscoop in Dallas and HP’s plans to take the show

Don’t leave money on the table by letting training, testing, professional services and business development support offered as buyer incentives expire. Make sure that the deadlines included in the contract

Finding paper that will give you the quality you want at the best cost can make or break the economics for production inkjet. Choice of paper will directly impact the

As faster and more productive inkjet devices reach the market, maximizing productive uptime is truly essential. Unfortunately, many companies skimp on building the costs for essential software into their inkjet justification. Find out how costly this mistake can be.

OEM executives and analysts offer balanced overviews of the pros and cons of the different print head technologies, but to understand which is best buyers need to look beyond the head technology itself and consider specific characteristics of each implementation of the technology. Here are the questions to ask.

David Zwang joins us for an initial look at an interesting new screening software development that significantly improves the quality of inkjet imaging. The software referenced is only available as an option from an OEM as part of their RIP, or as a component in a custom-developed (bespoke) hybrid inkjet printing solution.

The amount of paper wasted during start up can be a big differentiator for continuous devices – particularly those with a wide web. Companies that make frequent paper changes leaving partial rolls need to look carefully at paper handling options, splice detection and the ability to print full quality during ramp-up. Sheet fed devices have come on the market that may be sound alternatives when frequent paper changes are required subject to volume constraints.

The structure of your maintenance plan is crucial to the success of your inkjet investment. Pay particular attention to how print heads are covered in terms of jet-outs or other quality issues that would require print heads to be serviced or replaced. If your quality requirements are high, you need to make sure that you are covered for the level of quality you need to deliver. How many jet-outs can you live with? Look at the break-down of self-maintenance versus OEM maintenance and the expected level of downtime.

While the conversion of marketing collateral from offset to digital may not be high, the value for digitally printed collateral is often much higher than other applications, typically driven by shorter run lengths, versioning and personalization. This has created excellent revenue opportunities for commercial printers who specialize in this area.

In this installment of “Let Data Drive your Print Quality Comparisons” Mary Schilling discusses the importance of chroma, how it’s defined within the context of print quality analysis and differences between inkjet and offset.

Eric Wiesner of HP provides the 4th installment in our print head strategy series. Wiesner provides some history on HPs print head developments and highlights the factors that drove HP to select thermal print heads for their production devices in the graphics market.

Despite what can be seen as very healthy growth rates, the production inkjet market could be growing considerably faster. Let’s look at the barriers to inkjet growth and how we as an industry can work together to tear them down.

Energy efficiency is a big deal – particularly in application-segments with high coverage requiring intensive drying power. Some manufacturers have done an exceptional job of redirecting heat from other areas of the device to drying chambers, thereby reducing energy needed for drying and also reducing energy needed to cool the print engine itself. Many OEMs offer a standard drying option plus variations available based on need. Make sure you are asking about, and testing with, the drying options that are most suitable to your application segment. 

Marco Boer of I.T. Strategies talks about the component parts of various OEM’s aqueous inkjet programs that are enabling inks to “stick it’ on challenging surfaces with a particular focus on aqueous coatings.