Kodak's Versamark can claim to be the pioneer of high-speed inkjet continuous-feed colour printing. It has been more than a decade since it announced the technology and installed the first machine at Israeli transactional print firm Be'eri in 2000. Back then, Versamark was Scitex Digital Printing, which itself was created when Kodak sold its high-speed inkjet business to the then Israeli printing technology giant Scitex.

Things have come full circle with the Dayton, Ohio division of Scitex back in Kodak hands since 2004. When it comes to imaging technology, developments have moved on a-pace. The original Versamark was based on continuous inkjet technology, where ink droplets are continually ejected and are steered to or away from the substrate using electrostatic forces, depending on whether a drop is required or not.

It's still the fastest inkjet technology and, as such, is at the heart of Kodak's next-generation inkjet technology, Stream. The firm has just begun commercialising Stream with its Prosper S5 and S10 monochrome overprinting heads and a full-colour machine is expected to be launched in time for Ipex next May. Stream promises to be a no-compromise digital printing technology that offers the speed, quality and cost-effectiveness of litho with the potential to personalise and produce short, targeted runs of digital. And while Stream promises the best of both worlds - speed and quality - current continuous inkjet is a little more lopsided; it can deliver speed in spades, but the compromise is that quality leaves something to be desired.

Inkjet technology advances
However, in the past couple of years, drop-on-demand inkjet has come on leaps and bounds. The technology has always been capable of high-quality, although until recently that came with a speed penalty. The latest printheads have changed that and Kodak has found itself facing competition from rivals, including InfoPrint, Océ and Screen. Although these machines lack the all-out ‘grunt' of Kodak's continuous inkjet colour machines - the Versamark VT3000 and VX5000, which can reach 228m per minute or 3,080 pages per minute (ppm) - they have productivity-a-plenty for firms finding their way in transpromo and high-volume direct mail, with the benefit of a lower cost of entry.

To redress the balance at Drupa last year, Kodak announced the Versamark VL series - an interim, if you can't beat them join them, continuous-feed machine using drop-on-demand piezo inkjet printheads - in order to deliver higher quality than the VT and VX machines, but without the massive 228m per minute maximum speed. "Kodak knows about inkjet, having been in the market for 40 years, and we've been doing full-page, full-colour personalisation for the past 10," says Marie-Luce Delaune, Kodak GCG Eamer marketing programme manager for inkjet printing solutions. "And so have our customers. You don't build expertise overnight and on your own - it takes time and you learn from your customers."

Three of a kind
The VL series consists of three models: the 2000, 4000 and 6000, all of which are available in single-unit or double-unit configurations, which are denoted as the 2200, 4200 and 6200. The 2000 is designed for transpromo, transactional and direct mail work. Its 75m per minute speed on a two-up web produces 504 A4ppm on a single engine or 1008 using the twin-engine configuration. That productivity means a significant volume of work is needed to fill the machine. "Below 1m pages per month, forget it - unless you are planning to scale up your application," says Delaune. Depending on whether you have a single engine or the twin-engined version, and what model, the VL is capable of monthly volumes ranging from 1m A4 pages per month all the way up to more than 10m. Resolution for the 2000 is binary (drop or no drop), at 600dpi.

Next in the range is the VL 4000, which is designed for newspaper printing. "We know it is a narrow market, but it has real potential because of the time and transport savings," explains Delaune. "A guy looking at a sample on my desk didn't know that it had been digitally printed - that's the ultimate compliment because he was looking at the content not the medium."

In order to suit the newspaper market, the 4000 has a lower resolution of 600x360dpi and a higher web speed of 125m per minute. Miller Group has ordered a 4000 for digital newspaper production in Portugal.

Topping off the range is the VL6000, which offers speed and quality benefits - though not at once. The machine can either be run in a 600dpi multi-bit drop mode that delivers four grey levels per spot at the same 75m per minute speed as the 2000, or can be run at 150m per minute in the 600dpi binary mode.

Choosing the right ink
Kodak offers a choice of dye or pigment inks with the VL and most customers opt for the dye inks as they are 30% cheaper. Early installations were all pigment inks, because the dye ones weren't ready, but most firms have, or plan to, switch to dye inks. For some applications, notably onto glossy coated stocks, the pigment inks work better.

Despite this, for any firm switching from toner-based transactional work to inkjet, whether straight swap for transaction or a move to transpromo, Delaune warns that some stocks aren't compatible with inkjet, and inkjet-compatible stocks may be slightly more expensive, However, she claims that overall production costs are lower with the VL than comparable toner technologies.

Given the high production volumes these machines are aimed at, and the need to have resilience, the most popular approach has been to buy two single-engine machines to ensure redundancy should one drop out. Kodak is introducing an L-shaped configuration that improves flexibility by allowing the two engines to work in isolation or together in two-up duplex mode.

Kodak offers three controllers for the VL Series: the CS300c is an IPDS controller as used in the VX and VT machines, so providing a common platform for firms bolstering existing Kodak high-speed inkjet machines; the CS410 is a high-speed IPDS controller; and the Kodak 700 Print Manager is a new front-end that also drives the Prosper overprinting heads and can integrate with other Kodak Unified Workflow tools. In the future, the 700 will support the Adobe PDF/VT format.

The front-ends can also be driven by third-party transactional and transpromo software, including Exstream and GMC with the choice of PostScript and PDF in addition to IPDS data streams. To that end, Delaune says: "The workflow is well provided for, we focus on the engine."

SPECIFICATIONS

Print width 474mm

Web width 520mm

Speed (linear metres per minute)
VL2000/2200 75m
VL4000/4200 125m
VL6000/6200 150m

Resolution
VL2000: 600x600dpi
VL4000: 600x360dpi
VL6000: 600x600dpi with multibit drops

Monthly volumes 1m-5m A4 pages for a single engine; 5m-10m for twin-engine configuration.

Type drop-on-demand piezo inkjet

Workflow choice of three front-ends:
CS300c
CS410
700 Print Manager

Price from £900,000 (€1m) for the VL2000

Contact Kodak 020 8424 6514