In a recent post concerning Miyakoshi I stated I would come back to the subject of their inkjet technology. I am doing this now by covering how Océ is going to market with its high-speed JetStream 1100/2200 range of color inkjet continuous feed printers. This range of printers is largely built by Miyakoshi with Océ device control electronics, system controls and the high performance Prisma controller.

The first thing to define is that this is a range of printers. The models are as defined below with guideline pricing in the US market:


  • JetStream 750 - Single engine press running at a speed of 750 A4 pages/minute. Price $1.9 million

  • JetStream 1100 - Single engine press running at a speed of 1,100 A4 pages/minute. Price $2.7 million

  • JetStream 1500 - Dual engine press running at a speed of 1,500 A4 pages/minute. Price $3.75 million

  • JetStream 2200 - Dual engine press running at a speed of 2,200 A4 pages/minute. Price $5.4 million

  • JetStream 3000 - Dual engine press running at a speed of 3,000 A4 pages/minute. Price $6.4 million

The slower 750 and 1500 presses are slowed down versions of the 1100/2200. The JetStream 3000 runs at a reduced resolution of 480 dpi to achieve the higher speed. The 3000 is not currently available but a JetStream 2200 can be upgraded in 2009 to a 3000 for a price around $1 million. All the printers apart from the 3000 run at a 600 x 600 dpi resolution with up to four gray levels. The quality of output in the printed samples running on the press at drupa looks good but there was a degree of graininess in newspaper color images. This could be because of work still going on in tuning the color or it could have been in poor images in the supplied newspaper files.

The printers use print heads from Brother Kyocera and each full width print array is made up of ten individual print head elements. If a print head element fails it takes an engineer around one hour to change the head. The paper does not need to be un-threaded and then re-threaded through the machine. Print head life is quoted as 3,000 printing hours. There is a camera system within each printer unit that is checking for and reporting print head failures. Océ quote a minimum uptime for the machine of 70% but state that so far in all testing of the machine uptime has remained above 90%.

Running costs for the machine will have a separate click rate for color and monochrome. Océ will also offer a non-click pricing policy where a user pays for consumables and service. Océ state that the presses are available in all territories of the world today

The amount of interest in the press at drupa has been substantial with great interest in a number of market areas and applications including transactional, transpromo and newspaper printing.

At drupa there has been a great degree of interest in digital newspaper printing with systems being shown printing newspapers from Agfa, HP, Océ, Screen and Xerox. Unfortunately Xerox was printing on high quality paper rather than newsprint so it was not really be compared by those organizations looking for a press. Screen was showing a double speed engine by reducing the resolution in one direction from 720 - 360 dpi so now has a press running at more than 120 meters/min. Agfa sold a dual engine Dotrix to a newspaper in Portugal. HP, Océ and Screen printed newspapers regularly during the day and finished them using Hunkeler finishing technology. I spoke with a number of organizations that are evaluating aquisition of such a digital press so I expect to hear of more announcements in future. It looks like the digital newspaper printing market may be starting soon.

I started this post on the subject of Miyakoshi. Obviously the agreement between Miyakoshi and Océ is going well and the first machines have been installed. The target market for the JetStream presses is the typical transaction, transpromo, direct mail and newspapers and books. The current Océ JetStream range seem well suited for this. I would speculate that perhaps the Océ and Miyakoshi agreement could be extended in future. Miyakoshi has another variant of the press used by Océ. This is the Miyakoshi model MJP20V or as Miyakoshi call it the MJP600 with UV. This is basically the same print engine as the one used by Océ and it uses the same Brother/Kyocera printheads as far as I can tell. It does however print using UV curable inks. It is still a 600 x 600 dpi unit with up to 4 gray levels but it is slower with a speed of only 100 meters/min (Did I really mean only 100 meters/min!) Océ has a great distribution channel and in where printing on more difficult substrates or awkward environment conditions apply is important, a UV high-speed inkjet press could be a very interesting product. After all Agfa uses UV curable inks in its Dotrix product line.