On a recent visit to the USA I was invited to meet with executives of HP’s Inkjet High Speed Production Solutions division to discuss the current status of its programme for the HP T300 inkjet web press. For personal reasons I had not been able to attend the recent Print 09 event when HP demonstrated the progress they had been making with the T300 press, so this was a good opportunity to get up to speed on what has been happening in this area. I found this to be an interesting visit as almost nothing had been written about what HP had been doing by either the trade press or the industry analysts following Print 09.

I have to admit to being totally ‘blown away’ by what I saw. The developments that HP showed me were far in advance of anything I expected, and I am amazed that none of the press or analysts who had seen this at Print 09 had commented on them. I look at everything that is happening in this high-speed continuous feed inkjet printing area and I have to say that HP is ahead of all its competitors in what it is achieving.

So what was it that HP showed me, and had been shown others before me, that so impressed me? The last time I had a good look at the HP Inkjet Web Press, now called the HP T300 Color Inkjet Web Press, was at the event HP hosted last April at their first customer O’Neill Data Systems in Los Angeles. At that time the press installed as a beta test unit had been running only a short time. The output shown to me at Print 09 had been printed on this press at O’Neill Data Systems, and was the first I had seen in color on HP’s special ColorPro media. ColorPro is coated and uncoated media that has been optimized for inkjet printing, and where the bonding agent used on the T300 press for non-optimized media is not used.