InfoPrint’s Production Color Journey
Celebrating 50 years in Production Printing
The InfoPrint 5000 and InfoPrint Pro C900 have a long and illustrious history that began nearly two decades ago. The successful InfoPrint 5000 and the recently announced InfoPrint Pro C900 cutsheet color printer have a backstory that illuminates our journey.
The emergence of leveraged development
Printing Systems Division launched the InfoColor 70 at Drupa 1996 under the emerging leveraged development model (accelerated development cycles enabled by purchasing technology versus developing it). The print quality was excellent and aimed to please customers in the graphic arts market. During the next few years, the InfoColor 70 evolved to the Infoprint Color 100, the Infoprint Color 130, and the Infoprint Color 130 Plus, which included AFP for the first time and won two Xplor Technology of the Year Awards. The model numbers reflected the speed in pages per minute. In comparison, production mono printers were running at 600-1000+ ppm during that time.
In 1997-1998, IBM launched models of the 4005 hi-lite color inkjet device for the transactional market. The technology was acquired from Accent Color Sciences. The ink was solid, like crayons, and it was heated to liquid form for printing. Ultimately the 3.2” to 8.5” width proved too limiting.
The next generation of color inkjet
During the late 1990s, a Printing Systems Division team started investigating new technologies suitable for the next generation of color printing to meet the broad range of worldwide customer color requirements.
The Printing Systems Division color investigation team completed in-depth assessments of several technologies, culminating in the recommendation of the Screen Media Technology print engine, which evolved into the InfoPrint 5000. The InfoPrint 5000 is an 862-916 ipm, full color inkjet printer that works with PostScript, PDF or AFP.
Pushing into new markets with color cutsheetThe InfoPrint Pro C900 was announced in October 2008. The Pro C900 is laser technology with many media options and inline finishing. Its superb color management system produces exceptional color quality.
The market is evolving along with our line of production color printers. Marketers are recognizing the opportunities in variable data printing to execute multi-channel campaigns and customer retention programs. Color technology is becoming a business opportunity with implementation shared by marketing and IT. The continuous forms printers, such as the InfoPrint 5000, are targeted primarily to our traditional base of transactional customers. The InfoPrint Pro C900 will help us expand into markets such as print-for-pay and in-plant printers who want affordable short-run, print-on-demand capabilities for jobs as diverse as books, collateral, TransPromo and direct mail. Eventually the Pro C900 is expected to run AFP in addition to PostScript to broaden its market appeal.
The market will continue to evolve as more customers focus on sustainability as a way to help them reduce print volumes within an application and on TransPromo to help them develop new, more effective applications.