Balaji Rajagopalan, Executive Director- Technology, Channels & International Business, Xerox India, speaks about the Xerox Iridesse high-end Production Press which takes digital printing to a whole new level.
Xerox’s latest offering is the Iridesse Production Press. The Xerox Iridesse Production Press is a high-end production-colour press which takes digital printing to a whole new level, creating stunning results. It offers all the hallmarks of a digital press – personalization, economical short runs, and agile production – enhanced by new high-value inline capabilities that allows users to combine stunning four-colour imagery with up to two Specialty Dry Inks in a single pass. This enables them to create lucrative applications with spot colours, metallic and mixed metallic gradients, and specialty enhancements. Gold and silver dry metallic inks can be used on their own or layered under or over CMYK to create unique iridescent palettes. A layer of clear dry ink can be added for an extra touch of dimension or texture.
Iridesse, the name, is a play on the word ‘iridescence’ – meaning the phenomenon of certain surfaces that appear to gradually change colour as the angle of view or the angle of illumination change. It is synonymous with visual effects beyond CMYK that amplify page content and captivate recipients – all delivered with flexible, single-pass printing. Broadening horizons with a vast colour palette, wide media flexibility and high value inline finishing, the Iridesse press is synonymous with new capabilities and new levels of production confidence. Since, it comes standard with Color FLX Technology, customers can achieve the kind of flexible spot and mixed specialty effects that meets the growing demand, hence making it easy to create high impact prints – more results-driving, “wow”/excellence per page.
Additionally, Xerox FreeFlow Core’s pre-built workflows enable print providers to automatically and selectively transform text and graphics for printing gold and silver without editing the source documents. This simplifies enhancing existing applications with high-value embellishments.
Printing at speeds up to 120 pages per minute, the press can run stocks from 52 -400 gsm. Additional press features include:
- The High Definition Emulsion Aggregate (HD EA) Toner process results in the optimal particle size to deliver lower gloss, smooth tints and fine detail more consistently
- The Xerox EX-P 6 Print Server by Fiery® enables customers to create customized workflows for metallic applications with advanced RIP capabilities and color management tools
- Two Dual Advanced High Capacity Feeders, Bypass and Inserter options let customers run up to eight different stocks in a single job, or do production runs with a total of 12,500 sheets
- A variety of finishing options are available including the new Xerox Crease and Two-sided Trimmer, which creates a durable crease fold and gives booklets a premium quality edge when used with the Xerox Production Ready Booklet Maker Finisher and Xerox SquareFold Trimmer Modules.
Creating more opportunities for print
Xerox Iridesse, a one of its kind press, with robust production capabilities, enables its users to take on complex jobs, irrespective of tight deadlines, non-traditional stock sizes, weights, and embellishments. “We believe that it is capable of expanding capabilities while simultaneously simplifying production,” says Balaji Rajagopalan, Executive Director- Technology, Channels & International Business, Xerox India. The automated, advanced technologies combine to take costly human touch out of press setup and the complementary workflow solutions further simplify key processes, making it an incredibly smart business Investment. Combined with a robust print path, versatile finishing options, and up to 120 pages per minute, this all will add up to brilliant new opportunities for high-value print production and create new revenue streams.
Here are few examples of how people across fields are made capable of giving each job a brilliant finish, with the new Iridesse press.
- For a designer, vibrant colours, high quality and intricate details are absolutely critical. This device makes designing and printing of high-value jobs cost-effective. Its ability to lay metallic sheens over normal colours and create beautiful iridescent effects, adds a new level of intensity to normal jobs.
- For a marketer, it is important for the products to look their best in printed materials. Adding silver, gold or enhanced imagery, gives the products a competitive edge and attract more customers.
Color FLX Technology with EZ Swap allows printing beyond CMYK
Color FLX Technology with EZ Swap allows printing beyond CMYK with vibrant iridescent palettes and “spot on” registration.
“The FLX technology provides a unique flexibility, wherein the customer can choose from different types of overlay and underlay that can be printed with CMYK to create variety of effects like, spot, glitter, shine, iridescent etc. The customer has a choice to underlay silver and overlay it with clear ink or gold. Alternatively, he can choose to underlay gold and overlay with clear or silver. All these examples have CMYK printing between the 2 layers. However, this technology also provides a unique flexibility that can expand the application horizon – it allows the customer to just print gold and silver,” explains Balaji.
Specialty Dry Inks help customers outshine their competition
Xerox Specialty Dry Inks — including Metallic and Clear — help customers outshine their competition by adding incredible value to their digital prints. The newest Specialty Dry Inks allow users to migrate more jobs to digital, creating silver and gold metallic effects with images, artwork, logos, text, seals, and personalized communications. “It enables them to highlight logos and graphic elements with stunning metallic effects, enhance the look of photos and collateral with metallic image overlays and bring the eye-catching value of metallic inks to personalized communications to add even more pop to their jobs. On the other hand, the Xerox Clear Dry Ink allows our customers to add new dimensions to output using spot, flood, or textured effects,” adds Balaji.
Across the industry, most people who provide print, design and marketing services, aspire to work on projects that involves specialty effects, however, the added cost and time is usually a deterrent. With the Xerox Iridesse Production Press, Xerox aims to change that perception and to offer customers the embellishments they want, cost-effectively, with the speed, personalization, and turnaround advantages of digital print.
Customers benefit from Mixed Media Xceleration of Iridesse
Mixed Media Xceleration (MMX) of Iridesse delivers maximum productivity and performance for high-value, mixed stock and mixed embellishment jobs. Technologies integrated throughout the press ensure superior performance for mixed or specialty stock jobs up to 400 gsm. This capability ensures our customers are ready for the most challenging job requests. Two chained Dual Advanced High Capacity Feeders, coupled with our Bypass and Inserter options, lets our customers run up to eight different stocks in a single job – or a maximum of 12,500 sheets. The press has been designed to handle multiple stocks, imaged with up to six colours, and finished at rated speed so they can offer complex digital embellishments with supreme confidence. Xerox will provide direct service support for Iridesse in India.
The Xerox Versant 180 and its growth path
According to latest IDC report (2018), Xerox market share has grown 19% 2018 Q1 YoY and 26% 2018 Q1 vs. Q4 2017 in the production printer market. This talks volumes about Xerox dominance in the production space. The launch of the new Versant 180 powered with Performance pack is in continuation to the tremendous success of Versant family. These mid-production-colour presses consist of a unique combination of higher image quality, greater media latitude and higher duty cycles for more productivity and performances.
“With the Versant 180, Xerox clients have been able to advance and automate, allowing them to do more. From press maintenance to job delivery, the Versant 180 has been delivering class-leading performance for in-plant and on-demand print shops,” informs Balaji.
“Since, the Xerox Versant family has already established a merit in productivity, automation and media flexibility and we have seen a great response in the market, we are excited to launch the Xerox Versant 180 press powered with Performance Pack enables fully productivity with an ability to print at rated speed up to 350gsm. In addition it has an Automated Color Quality Suite (ACQS) powered by X Rite that helps in better color consistency. It also gives 25% faster speeds on stocks up to 350 GSM,” he continues.
Performance Package of Versant 180
It is another variant of our very successful Versant series, where the customer has the ability to print rated speeds (Speed does not drop and you get superior performance) and has an inline spectrophotometer for automatic calibration. Additionally, the machine comes with an external fiery FS 200 pro for better colour management and performance. The production ready finisher helps finish the jobs into stapled sets. It also has a strong decurler that straightens the paper after it has run through the fuser. All these features boost performance and productivity.
Digital inkjet vs. Toner based technology
“Inkjet technology is still at its nascent stage when compared to toner technology,” believes Balaji. “The full utilization of inkjet will come into being when we can have more substrate compatibility on high speed inkjet devices without the need for any coating on the paper. The inkjet technology has viable benefits in terms of operating costs on low color coverage area jobs. Also, the quality of high speed inkjet devices have to walk some distance before they match the quality of toner presses which has evolved over the years,” he adds.
The digital printing market in India has evolved over the years and there are several drivers contributing to this growth: the rise of applications and solutions; increased versioning and personalization to make targeted printing for end-users; improved levels of service to customers; and providing new opportunities to help customers grow their business. Also, the digital presses with the technological advancement ensure ease of printing as well as space and cost effectiveness. These days doing business on the go is the need of the hour. Innovation being the backbone of digital presses, the feature of remote printing has been very well accepted by the customers and this has surely led to a spike in their adoption.
“Xerox sits at the intersection of analogue and digital and we are in a position to witness and impact several profound shifts in the way the world interact. Our ability to combine hardware and software has never been more valuable than in today’s world where digitization is blurring the lines between hardware and software, and connecting the digital and physical worlds to transform industries. For example, if you see our digital presses, they are segmented in a way that customers can customize digital and analogue settings based on their business needs, enabling the machine to add value to their business,” emphasises Balaji.
The fundamental principal of all Xerox devices is its ease of usability. “Xerox takes care of imparting trainings to the operators and gives advanced level of support for creation of new jobs, ensuring the customers are comfortable with the device and its applications. Our production ethos is to get great quality as quickly as possible. To meet this requirement, a variety of automation tools are added on the press in addition to a control centre, which allows easy management of the jobs. This includes jQuick job set ups, pre-press caches and a superior RIP that can be handled via simple commands,” elaborates Balaji.
Iridesse as an digital enhancement press
Xerox launched the new Iridesse Production press at PrintExpo in June 2018 and the response received has been overwhelming. In fact, we installed the first machine within the launch month and closed another order at the Expo. With capabilities like high speed, six station colour press that combines four-colour printing with up to two specialty dry inks in one printing pass, makes the Xerox Iridesse Production Press an industry first in the world of print. It is the only digital press that can print metallic gold or silver dry ink, CMYK and clear dry ink in a single pass, giving print providers an immediate competitive edge in the growing digital print enhancement market,” explains Balaji.
The digital enhancement (CMYK +) market is expected to reach a volume of 25 Billion A4 impressions by 2020. More importantly, the consumers in this market are ready to pay a premium ranging between 24% to 89%, thereby increasing the profit potential of the PSP by 400%. “Currently, this embellishment is done by multiple processes. For example, you print the sheet digitally or on an offset press and then use another digital or embellishment machine for the post processing. Today, the Xerox Iridesse Production press is an industry first – it prints CMYK and does the embellishment in one pass without the need for any change or stopovers, all at a speed of 120 PPM. No other press can give this application versatility and flexibility. It saves you time, effort and a lot of money,” concludes Balaji.