The Kameda Interview - Vision to Reality - Canon C7000Vp

Uh ... what I meant was, really huge (looking nervous).

Kameda

(Laughs.) The imagePRESS has been rated as the product with the highest image quality at Canon. These days people are also demanding higher levels of color image quality from copying machines. But this product stands out among the rest for the beauty of its images.
With copiers, up to now it has been a question of producing output that will satisfy customers mainly in office settings. The imagePRESS series, however, represents the first Canon products developed for the commercial digital press market.

When you say "commercial press," is that like an offset press used by a printing company or the press a publisher uses to print books?

Kameda

It's sort of in a different category from a printing press. With a press, you create a printing proof (a plate), put ink on the plate, and produce output by transferring the ink to paper. In contrast to that, imagePRESS systems produce output using electrophotographic technology that forms an image on an optical drum using static electricity, and then transfers toner to the paper, where it is fixed to the surface.
The goal, however, of creating commercial quality printed material is the same as a press.

1. 1. Charging

   

   The photosensitive drum surface is negatively charged with a static charge of 700 V.

2. 2. Exposure

   

   Laser beams scan the photosensitive drum to form an image. Areas exposed to the laser beams lose their electrical charge.

3. 3. Developing

   

   Toner is brought in close proximity to the drum and affixes to non-charged areas.

4. 4. Transfer

   

   The photosensitive drum is brought into contact with the paper and a positive charge is applied from its back, transferring the toner onto the paper.

5. 5. Fixing

   

   Heat and pressure are applied to fix the toner to the paper.

The Electrophotographic Printing Process

So it's like a press, but it's not. In what ways is it superior to offset printing?

Kameda

It takes a lot of hard work to produce the printing proofs (plates) needed for a press to print correctly. However, as long as you have the proofs, you can print runs of thousands or tens of thousands of copies.
In that regard, the good point about commercial digital presses is that you can create and print images on the spot. It's also called POD (print on demand), and it eliminates the need to produce plates. For example, with the imagePRESS it´s possible to perform "variable printing," where you can modify the information in the printed material according to each customer. So we have narrowed down our target to small-volume printing. When you get up to large volumes, it's still cheaper from a cost standpoint to use offset printing.

So you can easily produce small volumes of books and printed material with personalized customer information. If you tried to do the same thing with a printing press, you would have to create separate plates. That would make a big cost difference, wouldn't it?

Hirobe

I've been told that POD is cheaper in cost terms than offset printing in the 500-3,000 copy range.
In fact, I heard from a customer in New York who actually uses the imagePRESS C7000VP that they use both for different purposes: the C7000VP for runs of up to 2,000-3,000 copies, and offset printing for higher volumes. When I asked, "Why is that?" they replied, "That's the point where the costs balance out." I was delighted to find that it worked in the market exactly the way we had envisioned it.

 

 http://www.canon.com/technology/interview/ipr/ipr_p1.html