(May 29, 2008) The Media And Precision Technology Company (President: Kyohei Fujisawa) of Dainippon Screen Mfg. Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Kyoto, Japan) has developed the world’s first sheet-fed*1 inkjet printing technology for use with ordinary printing paper, and is proud to announce a prototype of a full-color sheet-fed variable printing system that features this technology, the Truepress Jet SX.

In recent years, market needs within the printing industry have undergone a massive shift from mass production to the fast production of small lots of variable products. These days, the move to the production of printed products that add significant value by targeting individual customers is accelerating. What’s more, worldwide efforts to preserve our global environment have led to a greater trend towards Print on Demand (POD) printing, in which the exact amount of product needed is printed when it is needed. Because of these changes, there is significant interest in inkjet printing technology, which is expected to become the leading technology for next-generation printing, as well as in the creation of new products that use inkjet printing.

In 2005, against this background of change in the industry, Dainippon Screen combined the prepress and printing technology it has refined through the years with cutting-edge inkjet technology to develop an inkjet printing system that used roll media. It was marketed as a POD system that could add significant value to direct mail, invoices, free newspapers and more, and has gotten rave reviews in the sales slip and form printing markets, among others.

The newly announced Truepress Jet SX was developed to meet the need for sheet-fed inkjet printing in the general commercial printing market, as a complement to the roll-fed inkjet printing that is already available. The Truepress Jet SX features a newly developed single-pass*2 printing head assembly that offers a remarkable combination of high quality and high productivity, and it is capable of output quality as high as that achieved by ordinary offset printing presses. It can output on A2-wide size paper, up to 530 x 740 mm, which is the most common size used by printing presses throughout the world. What’s more, the Truepress Jet SX is the first sheet-fed printer of its size that can print not only on inkjet printing paper, but also on ordinary printing paper and thicker stock. The Truepress Jet SX offers overprinting onto offset printed products with no deterioration in quality, so it can be used in workflows that add POD technology to the traditional printing process. Combining ordinary, traditional commercial printing with a POD system makes it possible to create new added value in printed products.

Screen expects to release the Truepress Jet SX to the general public in about one year, along with information on business strategies that take advantage of a POD system that can use ordinary paper. Screen also looks forward to contributing to the future development of the industry by adding more products to its POD product lineup.