At a briefing about the company’s PageWide inkjet technology, HP senior technical specialist Ross Allen said the firm “could be persuaded” to produce a sheetfed inkjet press.
”It’s an area we see as an opportunity. Logically that would make sense,” he said.
“We are always looking five-to-ten years out. We work on a lot of projects and have technology that might have been in the lab for ten years. Then when an industry is ready we can commercialise it,” Allen added.
Allen has worked at HP for 34 years and was an original member of the company's thermal inkjet R&D team in 1981. Prior to that he was a rocket scientist working on a nuclear propulsion system.
HP has already made a 1.06m-wide (42in) printhead array for its T400 PageWide Web Press, and a 2.8m-wide version for the T1100S web, a joint venture with KBA aimed at the corrugated pre-print market.
“It [PageWide] has built-in flexibility from fives inches to almost any width. It’s completely scaleable,” he said.
The alliance with KBA has resulted in speculation that the two manufacturers could extend their relationship from web presses into sheetfed, with HP harnessing KBA’s sheet transport expertise.
Allen acknowledged that this area was a key challenge with any sheetfed inkjet device.
“Precision paper handling, keeping the paper flat in the print zone and controlling the leading and trailing edge is a technical issue we have to address,” he said. “Although you could argue that our PageWide XL printer is half sheetfed – it’s dynamically variable sheetfed inkjet web, so we have it already, in a way, in our toolkit.”
He also touched upon the potential for PageWide in textile printing. HP is also readying a 3D printer also using the technology, with beta installations scheduled for late 2016.
The nascent sheetfed inkjet market is poised for some major developments come Drupa. Fujifilm has already achieved an installed base of 30 of its B2-format Jet Press 720S worldwide, with 10 in Europe, and has just added the capability for it to handle heavier cartonboard for packaging applications.
Also in the B2 space, Konica Minolta is gearing up for commercialisation of its KM-1 UV inkjet press with a European beta site slated for January 2016.
Landa partner Komori showed its B2 sheetfed UV inkjet press, the Impremia IS29, at the IGAS show in Japan in September, while Landa itself expects to have its own B1-format presses in commercial production at customers by the time of the show.
And Heidelberg, the world's largest printing press manufacturer, has confirmed it will also have a B1 sheetfed inkjet press at Drupa.
HP Indigo's range of sheetfed and web presses use a liquid electrophotography process and transfer blanket, rather than printing directly onto the substrate.
