HP Rebrands Web Inkjet Series; Announces New Presses

Last February, HP (Booth 1202) launched its new series of PageWide fixed-array printers. On Sunday, the company announced that it was rebranding its entire line of production inkjet presses to get the most out of the PageWide brand that signifies quality, productivity, and reliability. Therefore, the HP PageWide Web Press series includes the T200, T300, T400, and T1100S series. HP also announced two new models: the PageWide T470 HD and T480 HD. “We are labeling these as the most productive color inkjet web presses,” said Eric Weisner, VP and General Manager of HP’s PageWide Web Press Division, “with our value proposition: high quality, high productivity, and high versatility.” Both models feature HP’s new High Definition Nozzle Architecture (HDNA) technology and offer enhanced print quality with dual-drop-weight architecture, 2,400 nozzles per inch, and built-in nozzle redundancy.

“This enables our customers to increase the number of applications and go after more market space than they currently go after today through the higher-quality image capability and higher productivity,” said Weisner, VP and General Manager of HP’s PageWide Web Press Division.

To increase the economics of inkjet printing, HP also announced the HP Priming Solution, available in 42" and 22" configurations. The duplexing Priming Solution can be installed inline or nearline and can run at speeds up to 600 feet per minute (fpm). The Priming Station is intended to make coated offset media inkjet-compatible, while at the same time lowering the cost per print. “By using these priming agents, our goal is to reduce the media cost for our customer anywhere from 20 to 50%, depending on the media they are using,” said Weisner. The 44-inch Priming Solution is currently in beta testing, while the 22-inch version will go into beta next month.

In March, HP had announced that, since the inception of the HP Inkjet Web Press, its customers had printed more than 100 billion pages. “In a few short months, we are now at 120 billion pages,” said Weisner. “Our customers are producing about four billion pages a month. If you were to lay those pages end-to-end around the Earth, we are circling the Earth every three days with pages printed on HP PageWide Presses.”

And that’s just inkjet. HP also announced new enhancements to the HP Indigo 7800 Digital Press, including enhanced on-press color management tools in press software version 11.4, as well as an in-line spectrophotometer, eliminating the need for manual color manipulations. Available this month, media fingerprinting, 3D color calibration, spot color refinement and other advanced color management tools streamline the process for color standards certifications, such as GRACoL and FOGRA, ensure accurate color matching on a variety of substrates and provide color consistency across presses and sites over time. The 7800 also features the new Optimizer, an on-press production management tool that helps manage the print queue, prioritize print jobs, plan substrate usage and improve efficiencies. The Optimizer enables continuous printing and proofing in parallel without the need to break between jobs, improving customers’ productivity up to 50 percent per shift.