Putting in the first example of any type of press can be a brave move, but when it’s still a relatively new and rare process too, then you need to be pretty confident in your choice of machine and supplier.
The company held a launch event in July to introduce the new press to customers. England’s Rugby World Cup winning captain Martin Johnson CBE cut the ribbon then posed for photographs with staff and customers. These were then printed on the new digital press, demonstrating its instant job readiness and one-off capabilities.
All of the company’s digital work that was previously handled by an ageing SRA3 HP Indigo 3000 has now been moved to the larger format Jet Press, says Jamie Emmerson, operations director. He adds that its very high print quality means it is also being used for short-run work that might otherwise have gone onto one of the offset presses for quality reasons.
“At the end of last year we modelled a four-week period on one of our Heidelberg presses,” he says. “Because it was doing a lot of short-run work we worked out that what was taking that press three weeks to do, could be done in one week on the Jet Press, which was part of the justification for buying it. And it was true! It’s because there are no plates and makeready and all the runs were less than 750 copies.”
Emmerson Press was set up by Brian Emmerson, in 1981, who still has an active role in the company. Originally based in Coventry, the company moved to its current 930m2 factory in Kenilworth in 1995. Brian’s sons Jamie and John joined the company in 1996 and today they are the operations and sales directors respectively.
Jamie Emmerson says: “Our reputation is for quality work. You’d come to us first for a quality brochure, for high-end commercial property letting, that sort of thing. We always say we’ll do anything from 50 business cards to 100,000 prospectuses and everything in between. It’s the property sector, education, automotive and retail.”
This quality focus has always influenced purchasing decisions over the years. “We had secondhand Speedmasters at first,” says Emmerson. “At Ipex 2010 we saw the XL being demonstrated, our jaws hit the floor, with the productivity and quality.” An order followed and was installed in 2011. “That was our first ever new offset press. A major thing for us.”
The company had put in its first digital press, an Indigo, in 1997, to be replaced by a new HP Indigo 3000 in 2004. “It’s now reached the end of its service life and HP has decided not to support it after the end of this year,” says Emmerson. “It’s a shame; there’s nothing really wrong with the machine and we could happily run it. But if a part failed in January or February, that would be the end of it.
“We had our eyes open for an alternative a couple of years ago, which is why we bought a Linoprint from Heidelberg.”
The Linoprint is a C751, an SRA3 digital toner press built by Ricoh and sold by Heidelberg with integration into its Prinect production network.
“We found out about the Jet Press late last year,” Emmerson continues. “We were knocked out by its quality. We’d already decided that our next B2 press would probably be a digital device. It might have been an HP, but the Fuji blew us away.” After visits to Jet Press users in Germany and Holland, the order was made.
Why not the B2 Indigo 10000 or the upgraded 12000, which has sold quite well in the UK? “Perceived or otherwise, reliability was a factor,” says Emmerson. “The 10000 I’m sure is a lot better than the 3000 series, but it’s still an offset process. You can get things associated with that, like banding. It’s just not present with inkjet.”
The basics
The Jet Press 720S is the second generation Fujifilm sheetfed B2 Inkjet press. A first generation prototype of the original Jet Press 720 was shown at Drupa 2008, but it took until the next Drupa before it was fully launched into the European market. Sales were modest and none came to the UK.
With the introduction of the 720S toward the end of 2014, Fuji incorporated lessons learned with the first one. The chassis is different and the list price was dropped from about £1.2m to just under £1m. There are no click charges: the user only pays for ink and primer plus a service contract. Fujifilm says that more than 70 of both models of the Jet Press 720 have been sold worldwide, or roughly a quarter of the number of the HP’s sheetfed B2 rival, the Indigo 10000/12000, which was introduced in 2012.
For the 720S the sheet feed and vacuum jacket were revised, as was the facility for head changes. Improved Vividia water-based wide-gamut CMYK inks were introduced, also with a price drop. Drying was improved with a combination of IR and an air knife. Optional features to support heavier weight carton board were added last year, including a new jacket for heavier/thicker board up to 600microns.
Like the original, the 720S is simplex so it needs a manually-loaded second pass for double-sided print. “Being a litho printer we’re used to work-and-turn sheet work,” says Emmerson. “It’s not a problem; there’s a barcode scanning system to make sure you’re backing up the correct sheet with the correct image.”
The press uses Dimatix Samba piezo inkjet heads in single-pass overlapping arrays, giving full 1,200dpi with four droplet sizes to increase the apparent resolution. An anilox roller just after the feed can apply a pre-coating called Rapid Coagulation Primer. Working together with the inks, this means that any conventional paper can be run.
The inks are CMYK only. The outgoing HP Indigo 3000 has a seven-colour facility with the IndiChrome spot colour ink mixing system. However, Jamie Emmerson says this hasn’t been a problem so far with the Jet Press. “In normal print mode it hits the CMYK spectrum. In wide-gamut mode it’s more and you can hit some spot colours pretty well. So dreaming, a fifth colour would be great. But in fairness you can certainly get Reflex Blue, even from the normal gamut.”
The Jet Press is supplied with Fujifilm’s XMF 6 workflow, which can process variable data jobs faster than the press can run. So far Emmerson Press is still using its Heidelberg Prinergy workflow for production of all plates and digital jobs, then passing 1-bit TIFFs to the XMF front end. “We want to use XMF as it’s part of the Fuji service contract, so there’s no real reason to carry on paying for Prinect as well,” says Emmerson. “We’re figuring out how to make things work together at the moment.”
According to Emmerson, installation went “really well”.
“We had to build an enclosure, a room to control temperature and humidity. We built the structure in two days, left some holes, and the next day they delivered the Jet Press. They spent two days getting it in position, then another two weeks of engineers installing, wiring and testing. They are good bunch of people and the UK people are amazingly helpful. It was a collaborative effort and it went well.”
Fujifilm’s office and Jet Press showroom is close to Brussels airport at Zaventem, which suffered a terrorist bomb attack in March. This affected travel for weeks afterwards. “Our two operators were due to go to Brussels to train there, but the week the machine was delivered was when the bombs were set off at the airport,” Emmerson says. “Fuji had to send their trainers to us.”
Performance in action
“I’m very happy with it, it is doing what we expected it to,” says Emmerson. Best and worst things? “Best is there’s absolutely no concern about the print quality, no matter what the job looks like. You don’t look at a job and think ‘oh, it’ll be interesting to see how that comes out,’ you know it will be fine. Colours are fine, flat colours and tints are fine, everything else is good.
“The ability to print on 400micron silk is attractive for some customers for business cards and covers. Our Jet Press can handle up to 410 microns, which is more than the Indigo.”
Steve Freeman, Jet Press solutions manager for Fujifilm, says that although the nominal limit is 300gsm or 340microns, heavier/thicker board (usually long grain) or lighter weights can be handled as long as Fujifilm qualifies it for the press. “We also have users running 90gsm on it,” he says.
“You don’t need to look at what the customer has given you, you just give it to prepress. You don’t need to think ‘shall we do it litho?’ because that would give a better result. It prints on any substrate because you prime the sheet before the ink goes on.
“If there’s a bad thing it’s that there’s no knowledge base, because it’s so new. So if you wonder ‘does Colorplan work with it?’ you have to get some sheets in and test it. It does, by the way, but we didn’t know that in advance. You’d expect that though, with having the first one.”
Would he buy it again, now the company’s got some experience with the Jet Press? “Oh yes, and recommend it to others, yes.”
SPECIFICATIONS
Sheet size range 545x394mm to 750x532mm
Printheads Four bars of 17 Fujifilm Dimatix Samba heads, each with 2,048 nozzles
Resolution 1,200dpi, four-level greyscale
Speed 2,700sph
Colours CMYK
Stock weight range 127-300gsm, or 105 to 340microms (lower and higher by arrangement)
Price £995,000
Contact Fujifilm 01234 245245 www.fujifilm.eu/uk/products/graphic-systems
Company profile
Emmerson Press is a general commercial printing company with a mix of offset litho and digital presses. It was founded in 1981 by Keith Emmerson, who defined the core values as “unbelievable service and quality”. It was originally based near Coventry, but moved in 1996 to its present site in Kenilworth. Today it employs 30 people and has an annual turnover of £4m.
Its three B2 Heidelberg litho presses are an XL 75, a CD 74 and an SM 74. It also has a Heidelberg Linoprint C751 SRA3 digital toner press (this model range has since been renamed Versafire). The B2 Fujifilm Jet Press 720S has effectively replaced the SRA3 HP Indigo 3000 liquid toner digital press that dates back to 2004.
Why it was bought...
Emmerson Press was increasingly finding that its offset presses were producing short-run work that was more suited to digital printing. It ran a modelling excercise and found that the volume of work it was producing in three weeks on its Speedmasters could be turned around in a single week if it invested in a Jet Press 720S.
How it has performed...
Having initially been knocked out by the press’s quality Emmerson has been similarly pleased with its other capabilities: “It’s certainly increased our capacity, and the company wants to grow so this will enable us to do that,” Emmerson says. “It’s reinforced our reputation as quality printers, and innovative too, as investors.”
