The Kodak Prosper 7000 Turbo Press is an inkjet web press that uses Kodak Stream Inkjet Technology offering printing speeds of up to 410m/min (1,345ft/min) or up to 5,523 A4ppm, which Kodak said “is almost 35% faster than its nearest competitor”.
The manufacturer said the machine enables commercial, publishing, and newspaper printers to compete more effectively with offset and to shift more long run jobs from conventional printing processes to inkjet.
The machine supports a maximum web width of 648mm (25.5 inches) with a variable cutoff length up to 1,372mm (54 inches) while printing on a wide range of coated and uncoated stocks, newsprint, and specialty and recycled papers. It can handle paper stocks ranging from 42–270gsm.
Offering three optimised print modes, Kodak said the Prosper 7000 Turbo Press allows printers to optimise their production process to always print at the best combination of speed and resolution.
The Quality mode (600x900dpi), which Kodak said was roughly comparable to offset printing using a 200lpi screen, is best for direct mailings, catalogues, and magazines.
The Performance mode (600x600dpi, offset equivalent 133lpi), meanwhile, is suitable for textbooks, fiction books, and other medium ink coverage applications, while the Turbo mode (600x450dpi, offset equivalent 85-100lpi) can be used for newspaper printing with low ink coverage.
The press uses eco-friendly, water-based Kodak nanoparticulate pigment CMYK inks. The inks offer a wide colour gamut and, due to their proprietary ink formulations, are said to support efficient drying even at peak press speeds.
The machine also features interstation drying using near infrared (NIR) technology. This enables the press to keep up with any of the print modes to ensure the highest quality output at the given speed.
Finally, the press also features the Kodak Intelligent Print System. This automatically takes care of monitoring and optimisation of stitching, colour-to-colour and front-to-back registration.
“The game-changing speed of the Prosper 7000 Turbo will help commercial, publishing and newspaper printers increase efficiency by shifting more long-run jobs from conventional printing processes to inkjet,” said Kodak executive chairman and chief executive Jim Continenza.
“We believe digital technology will grow in importance as a complement to offset as ongoing supply chain issues continue to increase the cost of pre-press. This new press reflects our continued commitment to investing in innovation that helps our customers succeed as the industry evolves.”
The Prosper 7000 Turbo Press is commercially available with immediate effect. Pricing had not yet been disclosed at the time of writing.
