AccurioJet KM-1 hits 30 with first French customer, gains new colour tech and partners

The AccurioJet KM-1: a “Swiss Army knife” of a digital press

Konica Minolta has announced its first French customer for the AccurioJet KM-1, online printer Realisaprint.com, which will by the end of February bring the worldwide number of installations of its B2 inkjet press to 30.

Already a Konica Minolta house, Realisaprint chose the KM-1 for its ability to handle a wide range of media, inlcuding canvas and PVC without pre-treatment. It will become the first reference site for the B2 digital press in southern Europe, while the first installation in Poland went into live production in January.

Colour registration and accuracy of the KM-1 have been improved via the introduction of Dot Freeze Technology. This involves heating the ink nearly to boiling before ejecting it. The cooling of the outside of the droplet as it travels from the printhead causes it to “freeze” in place on contact with the substrate, even before curing, avoiding colour bleed and registration problems.

According to Konica Minolta this keeps colour variance down to a delta-E value of 1.5 (a dE of 1 is the lowest a trained eye can generally detect). Speaking to Digital Printer, Mark Hinder, head of market development, Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe, said that the high-chroma inks also give a very wide colour gamut from the standard CMYK set, ‘way up there for Pantone matching – we don’t need a “shocking pink”.’

Substrate stability is improved by the use of litho-type grippers, which contributes both to image accuracy as the susbstrate can’t slip or vibrate during imaging, and to front-to-back registration.

There are plans for an automated inline finishing solution for the KM-1, being developed by UK company Rollem. This will also allow linking to other third-party finishing devices such as coating equipment from Harris and Bruno.

Five other companies are also working as development partners for the KM-1, including MIS developer Tharstern, Japanese cutting equipment manufacturer Itotec, Alwan Colour Expertise of France and US firms Scissor Hands and Ultimate TechnoGraphcis, who specialise in cutting and imposition respectively.

Mr Hinder also commented, ‘This B2 digital press is becoming the Swiss Army knife of the printing world because it has so many uses. It is providing our customers with the tool helping to unlock new applications, some of which probably required many different techniques to produce in the past.’