In the previous article on the Kodak event in Dayton I concentrated on the Kodak Stream continuous inkjet technology and the new Kodak Prosper Press platform. At this event Kodak also spent time on covering the Kodak Versamark VL series continuous feed inkjet color presses and the Kodak Nexpress SE and Digimaster EX300 sheet fed digital presses.

Kodak is unique among the suppliers in having two continuous feed color inkjet press platforms with the Prosper and Versamark VL presses. In fact they have three platforms with the older technology Versamark VT and VX presses. My understanding is that the Versamark VT and VX presses are mainly only being sold to existing users of these presses. The Kodak strategy is for the Versamark VL series presses to be sold predominantly for transactional and direct mail printing, as well as being targeted at newspapers. The Prosper presses are aimed at higher quality applications as a replacement for offset printing especially for printing on coated substrates.

The Versamark VL is now available as three different models, the VL2000/2200, VL4000/4200, and VL6000/6200. The VLX200 versions are twin engines presses capable of printing the full width web in duplex mode. The Versamark VL6000 can operate in two different modes. The first is the high-speed mode running at 150 meters/min, or high-quality mode with an unspecified higher resolution greater than the 600 x 600 x 1bit dpi of the high-speed mode, but at a speed of 75 meters/min. The Versamark VL4000 is a higher performance version of the VL2000 with a lower resolution of 600 x 360 dpi and a running speed of 125 meters/min. The main difference on the VL6000 is an additional set of print heads. The Versamark VL2000 and 4000 have two print head modules, each of which outputs two colors. In the VL6000 there are four print head modules with each module printing one color. This can either be with the print head module outputting single or multi bit ink drops for high-speed or extra quality.