The new WS6600p web press on show at HP Indigo’s Barcelona Photo Summit.
HP has announced the next step in its objective of accelerating the replacement of silver halide by digital print in the photo printing market, by launching an improved web press aimed at this market. New partnerships with other solution providers were also announced at the company’s Photo Summit in Barcelona.
The HP Indigo WS6600p succeeds the previous WS6000p model. The company said print quality has been improved through better filtration of inks, improved closed loop colour calibration, improved up-time, and an improved user interface. The press can print at up to around 30 metres per minute (about 40 metres in Enhanced Productivity mode), and has light cyan, light magenta and light black inks that can be added to CMYK. Typical applications include layflat books, book covers, and calendars.
Much talk at the Photo Summit was around the area of end to end solutions, incorporating HP Indigo press technology with partner technology, and new partnerships were announced that extend this further. Among these partnerships are Imaging Solutions, which manufactures the 50 metres per minute fastCut&Sort cutting and sorting solution, and Digital fastblock, an all-in-one solution for layflat book blocks; Ultimate Technologies, which launched a new imposition system for the photo market called PASS (Photo Automation System Solution) at the Summit; and Athentech, developer of software called Perfectly Clear, which automates high volume intelligent image correction for prints and photo merchandise products.
Future technologies were also mentioned: an inline UV coater from Duplo called the Ultra 300Ai (based on the Ultra 200A), due for availability in Q4 2013, which runs in line with HP Indigo 7×00 series presses; and an enhancement to come in the next version (v 5.1) of HP’s SmartStream Production Pro front end software that will ease finishing bottlenecks through the automated creation of JDF job tickets.
