The announcement last Tuesday by Océ of their new JetStream 1100 and 2200 high-speed printers is just one more announcement of the rapid move of suppliers to provide products for the anticipated future demands of certain markets for very high-speed color printers. I predicted this Océ announcement in my article of November 27 that covered new inkjet printing technologies. Océ was in fact one of the two companies that I stated would introduce new high-speed drop-on-demand inkjet printers using the printheads I was describing. I do however admit to getting my comments slightly wrong. I stated that the Océ JetStream printers would use the Panasonic printheads. I was wrong. I knew that the new Océ printers were to be sourced from Japanese supplier Miyakoshi, and I knew that Miyakoshi had printers that used both Panasonic and Brother/Kyocera drop-on-demand printheads. I just guessed at the wrong supplier. The new Océ JetStream 1100 and 2200 printers are in fact manufactured for Océ by Miyakoshi and use the Brother/Kyocera printheads. These heads that Océ calls DigiDot have a very comparable specification to the Panasonic heads and like the Panasonic heads can produce both binary and grayscale dots. Océ’s implementation of this printer differs from Miyakoshi’s in that it has a new Océ controller, the SRA MP IPDS to work with Océ PRISMA workflow software and connectivity to other proven front-end products. This controller draws on more than15 years invested in high speed AFP/IPDS controller development and the Océ charter membership in the AFP Consortium. The SRA MP supports the latest advances in AFP color technology.

The transpromo market is still very new and you will have to search far and wide to find companies with serious experience in building this new market.

The Océ JetStream 1100 and 2200 join many other high-speed xerographic and inkjet printers aimed at the evolving transpromo and direct mail markets. These now include the Agfa Dotrix Transcolor, Dainippon Screen Truepress Jet520, IBM Infoprint 5000, Impika 600, Kodak Versamark 3000 and 5000 series, Océ Variostream 9240 and 10000, and Xerox 490/980. In terms of pricing the starter price for a single engine non-duplex printer in this area will start at around $1 million. The faster the units go the higher the price charged. The new Océ units are as fast as the current performance leader, the Kodak Versamark 5000 with a web speed of 500 ft/min. This equates to 1,074 Letter pages a minute in simplex mode on the JetStream 1100 and 2,148 pages a minute in duplex mode on the JetStream 2200. For this Océ indicate a price around $2.9 million for the JetStream 1100 and $5.4 million for the JetStream 2200.