The battle for supremacy in digital printing: Ipex 2002, Birmingham

At Ipex 2002 a battle for supremacy in digital printing is taking place. If publicity is to be believed, this will be a direct tussle between Heidelberg's NexPres 2100 and Xerox's iGen3. Heidelberg is expected to accelerate away with its NexPress in 2H 2002. A large number of orders is expected at Ipex. The NexPress 2100 can produce up to 2100 A3 printouts. It weighs 3600 kg and is 3.4 × 1.8 m in size. Using Drylnk toner it offers fully variable data printouts on paper weights of 80-300 gm/square metre, in almost offset quality. There were four colours initially, but there is room in the machine for a fifth spot colour or varnish. Xerox's iGen3 is for colour documents in runs of 5000 or less. It offers variable data and offset-like quality. At the heart of the iGen3 is SmartPress technology, which uses microfine dry inks (toners), whose form can be controlled - from five micrometres. Xerox says the advantage of these small toner particles lies in the fact that the colour layers are thinner, leading to prints that feel smoother. The use of less toner also means less energy is needed to melt the toner on the sheet.