New Upgrade For HP Indigo Series

HP unveiled a brand spanking new upgrade to their Indigo series this week – wowing us with a new closed-loop colour control system.

The upgrade will be available on the cut-sheet 7800 and web fed WS6800. It promises to speed up productivity, create better visuals and bring printing to a wider range of materials.

Sheetfed 7800 Upgrade

The sheetfed 7800 is replacing the 7600 – using features already seen on the 5600. It illuminates job queues by organising production by priority, length, type of image and type of media. Further upgrades include one-shot printing, matte ink, ‘invisible’ red, light black and digital special effects (i.e. texturing, raised print and watermarks).

The one-shot colour printing feature has prefect registrations for plastic cards and  more as it enables you to print on synthetics. Furthermore, the new colour management system has an in-line spectrophotometer.

Inky facts:

• One-shot colour technology: print on plastic cards, overlays, lenticular applications, point-of-sale and premium postcards.
• HP Indigo ElectroInk Digital Matte: spot-coating effects on gloss
• HP Indigo ElectroInk: invisible red and light black
• Special effects: raised print, texture effects, digital watermarks
• On-press colour management: in-line spectrophotometer, hard-copy proofing to GRACol & FOGRA standards
• HP SmartStream Production Pro Print Server Version 5
• Raster Image Processing
• HP Indigo Direct2Finish

The Web-fed WS6800 Upgrade

The latest upgrade to the web-fed WS6800 include new inks, increased image area, a wider colour gamut and enhanced screening. The upgrade is a bid to better the application range and cost-effectiveness of the web label machine.

Extra features include a new incline spectrophotometer which cuts preparation time of profiling and matching special colours up to an incredible 75%.

Inky facts:

• Closed-loop control, in-line spectrophotometer: reduces time spent on preparing colour profiles, no more manual colour calibrations / adjustments and PANTONE colour matching
• Expanded frame width: 320mm (from 317mm)
• Enhanced Productivity Mode (EPM)): produces 131 linear feet per minute in colour
• HP Indigo ElectroInk White: reduces production steps (single pass sleeve)
• HP Indigo ElectroInk Silver: UV flexo ink, spot of base colour on label applications (paint, automative, household chemicals, nutraceuticals and soft drinks)
• HP SmartStream Labels
• Packaging Workflow Suite 4.1 powered by Esko
• High-definition screen produces 223 lines per inch with bettered gamut space

What’s Being Said About It

“It was important to offer the new features as an upgrade, customers need to keep their presses for 10 years at least and will expect a couple of upgrades in that time.” – HP GSB director of marketing, Francois Martin

“Our customers are always seeking ways to improve productivity and diversify applications so they can deliver more value to brands and end customers. The latest releases of our industry-leading portfolio demonstrate our commitment to providing customers stat-of-the art digital printing technology to meet these needs, while also offering an upgrade path that helps protect their capital investments.” – HP VP and general manager Indigo Digital Press Division, Alon Bar-Shany

“CEWE is constantly innovating and we need our digital printing technology to keep pace as we adapt to photo market trends and secure new business. With a large fleet of HP Indigo digital presses already, we appreciate how HP Indigo continues to deliver scalable technology that has allowed us to take advantage of quality and performance enhancements over times, and the features of the new HP Indigo 7800 will help us further extend our high-quality offerings, such as CEWE Photobook, as well as our application range to help maintain our business.” – Chief technology officer at CEWE, Dr. Reiner Fageth