Friday, May 04, 2012

Rivals launch a printing revolution that could be as significant as Gutenberg


Landa and Xeikon to unveil new inkjet and toner technology at drupa exhibition in Düsseldorf

Benny Landa
Prints of innovation … Benny Landa.

This week will see the launch of a revolution in printing that may turn out to be as significant as the invention of the Gutenberg printing press - if entrepreneurs and analysts are to be believed.

From May 3 to 16 more than 390,000 visitors are expected to visit drupa 2012 . Known as "the Olympics of printing", it is held every four years in Düsseldorf, Germany, and is the largest printing equipment exhibition in the world.

This year, visitors will see a number of rival technologies launched, each of which promises to deliver a "second digital revolution in printing" that will allow the digital printer to kill off the offset press for commercial printing, and may even allow the printed page to compete with the iPad in terms of visual quality and individualisation of content.

Digital printing mostly uses inkjet or laser printers to print directly from a digital image whether on your PC, phone or camera, for example, without using inked printing plates. Compared with the high speed, quality and efficiency of traditional offset printing, digital printing has suffered a so-called "productivity gap" since it first arrived on the scene back in the 1990s – the "first digital revolution". Inkjet printers, which make up the vast majority of digital printers, are able to print a large number of copies quickly but of poor quality and requiring specially prepared paper, while others, like electrographic or laser printers, use dry or liquid toner to print a large number of high-quality copies but at a comparatively slow speed, not to mention the "chemical weapons" such toners leave behind in the office.

Now, with the inkjet and toner technology due to be unveiled at drupa, "every printer could become a digital printer", according to Ralf Schlozer, director of on-demand printing and publishing services at the market research and strategic consultancy Infotrends: it is expected that the digital printer will finally be able to offer the same high (or even higher) quality, fast speeds and low costs as an offset press, even if these will be demonstrations of technology rather than the finished product. And then, according to the prophets of the second digital printing revolution, this new generation of printers will be able to make the quality of the visuals we see on the printed page equal to what you can see on your tablet, and to print each page with a degree of individualisation of content and "just-in-time printing" that may mean that eventually we won't have to click on an app to read our own tailor-made edition of the Guardian, it will be delivered to our door.
Although half a dozen new inkjet technologies and a handful of new toner ones are expected to be revealed at drupa, nothing better illustrates this coming revolution – and the battle over which printing technology is going to take us there – than the race to market between Landa Corporation's Nanography and Xeikon's Trillium Print Technology unveiled today and tomorrow. On one side of this battle is "a truly groundbreaking development" by the Steve Jobs of the printing world (and drupa keynote speaker) Benny Landa, and on the other, "a breakthrough technology" by "printing's best-kept secret", the Belgian company Xeikon.

This is a race that – like all the best ones – comes with its own history, since both Israel's charismatic Landa and Xeikon claim to have started the digital printing revolution in 1993 with the world's first digital press. Landa went on to sell his "iconic" Indigo technology to printing giant Hewlettt-Packard and then set up Landa Labs, his reputation made, while Xeikon sank back into Low Countries relative obscurity after finding their products quickly overtaken by the big boys of the printing establishment.
Full story at The Guardian.

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