PUBLICATION CENTER

At the drupa 2008 world market of print media, publishing, and converting held May 29 to June 11 in Dusseldorf, Germany, more than 1,900 exhibitors introduced 391,000 show attendees to innovations that will continue to redefine the role that printed products play in today’s world of Internet and electronic communications.

One company seeking to help print-service providers meet changes in the demand for printed products is HP. After acquiring and integrating Indigo, Nur, Scitex, and Colorspan, HP is pursuing its Print 2.0 strategy to drive the growth of digital pages and lower the costs of printing for high-volume commercial markets.  

By 2010, HP estimates that the value of pages printed in the global graphic-arts market will be $663 billion. Nearly 80% of this growth will be driven by marketing collateral, labels and packaging, publishing, and signage and displays—all markets that HP is targeting with its graphic arts portfolio.

For the signage and display market, HP introduced the first model in a whole new category of printers—the 104-in. HP Designjet L65500, which uses HP Latex Inks and Wide Scan Printing Technology. HP also introduced 14 new large-format media, including five recyclable substrates compatible with HP Latex Printing Technologies.  

With HP’s Latex Ink and Wide Scan Printing Technologies, the HP Designjet L65500 printer can produce a variety of outdoor and indoor sign applications at high print speeds while reducing the total impact of printing on the environment. 

The water-based HP Latex inks provide some of the benefits of solvent-ink technology without some of the environmental, health, and safety concerns. Specifically, the inks can produce good image quality, display permanence, and durability on most low-cost, uncoated solvent-compatible media. Yet the inks emit extremely low levels of VOCs (volatile organic compounds) so they don’t require special ventilation to meet occupational exposure limits.

And typically, no air-discharge-permitting is required. HP Latex inks also don’t produce ozone emissions during printing and contain no hazardous air pollutants (HAPs). The HP Latex Inks aren’t classified as a hazardous material for transportation requirements, there are no hazard warning labels, and they aren’t considered hazardous waste. The inks can also produce prints without the noticeable odor that can limit indoor applications.

HP Latex inks contain a mix of water, co-solvents and additives to control the ink and media interactions and droplet ejection, and latex pigment and pigment particles.  Inside the printer, a print-zone heater evaporates the water and a curing-zone heater evaporates the co-solvents, leaving the latex and pigment particles to form a durable film on the print media. (Click here to see a video on HP’s website that demonstrates the process.)

HP’s scalable Wide Scan Printing Technology delivers new levels of productivity by combining multiple 4.25-in. thermal printheads with an HP Optical Media Advance Sensor that helps avoid banding by ensuring that the media advances precisely and accurately between print swaths.  The Designjet L65500 uses the optical sensor with three WideScan printheads for a total of 31,680 nozzles, a firing frequency of 24 KHz, and an 8.5-in. print swath.

With these specs, users of the Designjet L65500 will be able to produce outdoor-quality prints at about 800 sq. ft./hr. and indoor-quality prints at about 400 sq. ft./hr. Each printhead contains two colors of ink and can produce 1,200-dpi prints with a 12 picoliter drop size. The printheads don’t require daily manual maintenance, and the individual printheads are user-replaceable, eliminating the downtime and expense of a service call.

Outdoor prints produced with HP Latex ink can last up to three years outdoors unlaminated and five years laminated. According to HP, the prints will have a level of scratch-, smudge-, and water-resistance comparable to solvent-ink technology. Indoor prints produced with Latex Inks will last up to five years unlaminated in a window and up to 10 years laminated.

HP suggests that the Designjet L65500 is suitable for everything from P-O-P displays, transit signage, and wall murals to exhibition graphics, billboards, vehicle wraps, and exterior event signage.