Pro C9110 with toner cartridges which can be changed on the fly

At the start of November, Ricoh ran an eight-day event at its newly christened ‘Customer Experience Centre’ – the Telford manufacturing site that is now operating as a ‘smart factory’.

Ricoh has begun the next stage of its journey. Having entered the production printing market in 2008, it now has been named as number one in both colour and black and white cut sheet production presses in Western Europe (according to Infotrends?). In continuous feed inkjet it is also strong – second in the market according to the same figures.

What comes next is a new generation of presses in both cut sheet toner and continuous feed inkjet, which have recently been announced. In addition, there is another aspect to the strategy: the re-branding and opening of the company’s long established Telford manufacturing site, where machines for the European market are assembled as well as used presses being ‘re-manufactured’. It now has the grander title of Customer Experience Centre.

Together, these twin factors are Ricoh’s ‘new dawn’ for production printing; they ‘demonstrate Ricoh’s strength and commitment to production printing and the strength and depth of our capabilities in Europe and worldwide’, said Peter Williams, executive vice president for Ricoh Europe’s Production Printing Business Group, at the opening of the Customer Experience Centre (CEC) at the start of November. He added that Ricoh believes the new products and CEC will significantly reduce barriers to digital printing growth – barriers such as image quality, running costs, capital costs, and workflow to knit digital and analogue together.

Speaking to Digital Printer, Ricoh UK marketing director Chas Moloney explained in more detail how the CEC, which he characterised as a true production printing factory environment, would benefit customers. He said: ‘Before customers come here they will have discussed with our account teams what their needs are – what jobs they can do and cannot do, what business they want to win. Then we can create that unique environment here, with the right press, the right media, the right job, and we can show some of the workflow software. We can show exactly how it will work on that press.

‘This is not a showroom, it’s a factory. Customers can see how a job will work in a real commercial printing environment.’

The factory itself operates under lean manufacturing/Six Sigma principles, and as well as helping customers to explore, test and confirm technology decisions at the CEC, Ricoh will also be able to deliver consultancy to customers on bringing these efficiency-improving measures within their own printing factories.

 

Technology experience

At the opening of the CEC, Ricoh went on to present its new technology. There is the continuous feed inkjet press, the 100,000 pages per hour VC60000, which is based on Ricoh’s inkjet print heads and its inks. Ricoh is targeting this at the commercial graphic arts market, with its high quality demands, and believes it will be a ‘game changer’ in this market. Image quality is stated as 1200 x 1200 dpi, but with variable drop size capability (down to a minimum of 2 picolitres), which gives a higher perceived quality. Offset stocks can be printed after going through an optional undercoat station, while a fifth print station can add a protective coating for anti-scratch or abrasion. Within this module there is the potential for a sixth station to also be added. Customers in Finland (Hansaprint) and The Netherlands (Zalsman) have already invested in the VC60000.

In cut sheet colour, the new flagship press is the Pro C9100 series, within which is a press capable of printing 130 A4 pages per minute (or 3970 SRA3 sheets per hour), with media capability on coated, uncoated and textured stocks up to 400 gsm, and a 700 mm banner feeding option.

With speeds up to 90 pages per minute is the Pro C7100x series, which opens doors to new creative applications with a fifth station as standard for white and clear toner. It also has the 700 mm banner printing capability. Easibind International is beta testing this press, with Harry Skidmore saying: ‘We are hoping we will be able to manage quite a flexible range of materials, synthetics and special grades of paper and card for applications such as packaging and point of sale. The 7100 is an energy efficient machine – you can control the temperature so you can optimise materials. It is also future-proofed; we know this is the next generation of digital print machines, producing litho quality at a digital price.

A further announcement from Ricoh was a step into MIS, using the cloud-based Avanti Slingshot system. Ricoh owns a proportion of Avanti, and while the MIS system is device -agnostic, it will be optimised to accept data from Ricoh printing devices and software tools.