The Ricoh Pro VC70000, the newest addition to Ricoh’s continuous feed family, has been developed with groundbreaking ink and drying technology.

Applied with our state of the art piezo drop on-demand print heads, the new extended gamut ink enables progressive commercial printers and direct mailers to print directly on a variety of offset papers without the need for pre-treatment or post-treatment.

This opens up a broad range of cost-effective application possibilities and enables professional printing businesses to offer a wider variety of services, traditionally reserved for analogue print, in a highly flexible and responsive way.

Old vs new
To understand how the new ink has transformed the print production capabilities, we should first look at how traditional inks are formulated.

General Aqueous Pigment Inkjet Inks comprise 80% water and the remaining 20% is made up of colourants, synthetic polymers that deliver performance enhancements such as dry rub durability and gloss, filament modifiers, humectants, sequestrants, surfactants, penetrants, conductivity modifiers, pH buffers, biocide, and corrosion inhibitors.

However, one of the challenges for aqueous ink is how to print on offset coated substrates given penetration and adhesion issues.

Ricoh’s new inkjet ink technology differs because the inks contain no more than 65% water.

The ink is denser, with more colourants, and uses less water to deliver higher optical density and faster drying times. It also supports the new RAPID (Radially Accelerated Performance Increased Drying) dryer in combatting curling and cockling of the paper and issues with intercolour bleeding.

This mix supports light and water fastness similar to the offset printing process for indoor applications.

Perceived 2400 dpi visual resolution
The ink also assures high quality results as the dynamically generated drops create a perceived visual resolution that is two times more than the physical resolution, so results that appear to be 2400dpi are produced.

As a result, with the new ink there is:

• No need for undercoat and/or protector coat when printing on offset coated papers.
• A larger colour gamut achieving a greater colour space.
• Faster speeds on offset coated stocks up to 150 m/min.
• A wider variety of coated media support.
• Faster uniformity.

Pro™ VC60000 compatible
The ink is also compatible with Ricoh’s Pro VC60000 high speed inkjet printer. Both the Pro VC70000 and Pro VC60000 are part of Ricoh’s rapidly expanding continuous feed portfolio that includes the Ricoh Pro™ VC40000, Ricoh Pro™ VC20000, Ricoh Pro™ V20000 and InfoPrint 5000. 

The Pro VC70000 is ideally suited to the production of direct mail, books, brochures, postcards, inserts, coupon books, education material including books and course packs, as well as critical communications documents. It prints at speeds up to 150 metres per minute, producing nearly 12,000 duplex B2 sheets per hour.

For more information, visit www.ricoh-europe.com.