A new cut-sheet inkjet press, the Baltoro HF, has been introduced by Xerox. Combining the company’s High Fusion (HF) inks with dedicated HF printheads and mechanical engineering from the iGen toner press line, the new model is said to offer ‘HD’ quality for transactional, direct mail and some commercial work at costs comparable to offset litho. It appears to supersede the Brenva cut-sheet inkjet model introduced in 2016.
The 1200 x 1200dpi 276 A4ppm SRA3 press uses what Xerox calls ‘automated intelligence’ to provide continuous quality checking and adjustment while being able to print on a variety of stocks, including coated litho varieties, without priming or pre-coating, thanks to the HF inks. Xerox says that avoiding the priming route reduces press size, power consumption and total costs of ownership while also increasing productivity.
‘We engineered the Baltoro HF by leveraging the best of our iGen and High Fusion inkjet technologies. The result is a breakthrough platform that expands into the commercial print environment and supports high-quality production with economics similar to offset printing,’ said Tracey Koziol, senior vice president of Global Offerings, Xerox. ‘Designing and manufacturing the Baltoro HF from the frame to the engine gives us a greater ability to continuously advance the platform at a faster clip.’
Driven by Xerox FreeFlow Core workflow software, the Baltoro offers a Cost Quality Optimisation algorithm that helps balance ink coverage and image quality against cost to suit different applications. The printheads offer a printable shorter dimension of 350mm (on a maximum sheet size of 364 x 520mm on stocks from 60 to 270gsm) which supports various multiple-up imposition possibilities for smaller finished product formats. Image quality control detects and compensates for blocked nozzles as well as implementing a number of features to improve smooth gradations, ink-free white space and images/type edges.
A variety of inline finishing options is offered, including stacking, booklet-making (including square back), perfect binding, punching and dynamic perforation via Xerox, Plockmatic/Watkiss, CP Bourg, Multigraf and Tecnau equipment.
The Baltoro HF is available to order now; deliveries are expected in Q3. Pricing was said by Bill Bay, Xerox worldwide product manager for iGen and cut-sheet inkjet, to be ‘comfortably’ under US $1 million.
