Xerox Bolsters Industry's Largest Digital B&W Production Portfolio
Press release from the issuing company
Tuesday April 17 -- BOSTON-- Xerox Corporation has revamped its entire monochrome production printing portfolio with an array of new products and image quality improvements designed to help print providers of all sizes tackle complex digital printing jobs and drive continued growth. The new offerings debut here at AIIM/On Demand, a major conference and exhibition for the document imaging industry.
"The black-and-white market continues to be an important area of focus and innovation for Xerox, as well as a significant revenue-generator for our customers," said Quincy Allen, president, Xerox Production Systems Group. "From light to mass production and every niche in between, our products and tools are aimed at meeting customer demand for high-quality output and delivering new ways to grow their business."
Highlights include a mix of new technology and enhancements to Xerox's monochrome production portfolio:
* The Xerox Nuvera 100/120/144 EA Digital Production System, a new platform using Emulsion Aggregation Toner, enables users to custom design the configuration that best fits their printing needs. EA Toner also is a key feature of the now officially launched Xerox Nuvera 288 Digital Perfecting System, giving the tandem-engine architecture black-and-white printing system a true offset look and feel.
* The Xerox 4595 Digital Copier/Printer presents a new entry-point in the light production monochrome category at 95 pages per minute. Also in the light production category, Xerox is adding a new print controller option for the award-winning Xerox 4110 Digital Copier/Printer.
* The Xerox DocuTech Highlight Color Systems, including the 128 and 155 ppm models, have new finishing options and print stream choices. In addition, the first custom-blended colors are available for these systems.
Next generation Xerox Nuvera EA platform
Xerox is unveiling the next generation of its Xerox Nuvera platform: the Xerox Nuvera EA Digital Production System line, which provides offset-quality images and brings Xerox Nuvera reliability beyond the industry standard set by Xerox's DocuTech systems. It also offers broad substrate flexibility, including coated stock.
The Xerox Nuvera EA platform will use EA Toner, Xerox's patented chemically grown toner. It has extremely small particles, resulting in a smooth, consistent offset matte finish and sharper details and images than traditional toner. EA Toner improves the overall reliability of the machine, requires less energy to manufacture and generates less waste. Developed in Xerox research labs, Xerox is constructing a state-of-the-art $59 million facility in Webster, N.Y. to manufacture EA Toner and expand its use.
The new Xerox Nuvera EA platform brings "mix-and-match" capabilities to mid- and high-production environments, allowing customers to design the configuration that best fits their needs. The platform is modular and upgradeable so products can be tailored to current and future printing requirements. Customers can now build a system by selecting their print controller, scanning, feeding and finishing options, and printing speeds - 100, 120 and 144 ppm. The platform is designed to meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's rigorous new ENERGY STAR requirements. Xerox's sheet enhancement module, which automatically ensures the sheets of paper stack perfectly flat, has also been incorporated into this new platform.
Tandem-engine Xerox Nuvera 288 available
A fully integrated, tandem-engine architecture makes the new Xerox Nuvera 288 Digital Perfecting System run two-sided prints twice as fast with image quality equivalent to offset printing standards. Two Xerox Nuvera print engines physically connected together in one system can produce books, catalogs, bills, statements and other graphic-intensive documents at 288 duplex impressions per minute (144 two-sided pages) - the industry's fastest cut-sheet duplex system. Xerox's "Pass Through Programming" technology - which keeps the Xerox Nuvera 288 DPS running even if one of the engines is stopped - provides continued productivity and uptime for commercial print operations and in-house printing facilities.
The system, shown last year as a technology demonstration and now available for customer installs, uses EA Toner. At a resolution of 4800 x 600 dots per inch and 156 lines per inch, the Xerox Nuvera 288 DPS is the highest resolution black-and-white digital production system on the market. The offset quality of the images coupled with the ability to run coated substrates makes the system ideal for transactional printing and book publishing, especially scientific, technical and medical manuals which include detailed drawings and images.
Other key features include: the sheet enhancement module; a Xerox FreeFlow DocuSP print controller including an optional second dual-core processor to handle extremely complex jobs with large amounts of graphics and variable images; and a parallel RIP, proprietary software that can simultaneously process multiple long jobs. It excels on jobs with many non-repeating scanned images or photographs such as text books, magazines, yearbooks and product manuals.
"As a business owner, everything is about productivity. Our Xerox Nuvera 288 Digital Perfecting System installed smoothly in December, and then we printed more than 5 1/2 million pages during the next 90 days," said David Rohe, president, The Document Centre, Carol Stream, Ill., one of the first companies to test the product. The Document Centre is producing saddle-stitched 8.5"x11" booklets and 200-plus page catalogs with all tabs and additional materials inserted as the books are printed. "We liked the machine so much that we just ordered another one," Rohe added.
New light production entry
With the continued growth of the light production monochrome segment, Xerox has introduced the Xerox 4595 Digital Copier/Printer. The 95 ppm system is based upon the same design as the award-winning Xerox 4110 Digital Copier/Printer.
The Xerox 4595 provides customers with advanced functions at an entry-level price point - making it ideal for K-12 educational institutions, large work groups, and quick and franchise printers. An easy-to-use control panel and extensive in-line finishing capabilities allow users to efficiently produce jobs including maps and booklets and everyday business materials like reports. Scanning 100 single-sided pages per minute or 60 double-sided pages, the system allows large networked offices and light production environments including in-house print shops to scan directly to e-mail or a File Transfer Protocol server. The Xerox 4595 includes an integrated print controller or an optional Xerox FreeFlow DocuSP print controller.
Xerox is also announcing a stand-alone FreeFlow DocuSP print controller for the 4110 Digital Copier/Printer, a 110 page-per-minute, black-and-white digital system. The server features expanded workflow control and variable-data printing capabilities for Xerox 4110 customers in corporate reprographic departments and quick printers and commercial printing operations.
DocuTech Highlight Color enhancements
Print providers can now choose a Xerox DocuTech 128 or 155 Highlight Color System with finishing options - stacking, stitching and tape binding - to generate new revenue-producing, high-volume publishing jobs such as books, manuals and direct mail. This enhanced finishing is already available for the DocuTech 180 Highlight Color System.
Customers who produce transactional documents including bills, statements and invoices now have more print stream choices on the DocuTech 128, 155 and 180 Highlight Color Systems. These systems already accept data in industry-standard formats such as Adobe PostScript and PDF for printing traditional publishing documents, and VIPP and PPML for personalized documents. With the FreeFlow DocuSP print controller, they can now accept data in IPDS and LCDS formats, eliminating the need to use software to transform the data stream before it reaches the printer, which can slow down throughput on print jobs and lead to errors.
In addition, Xerox's custom-blended color program is expanding. In phase one, red, blue green, cyan and magenta were available for blending for the DocuTech Highlight Color Systems. One additional color, yellow, and two additional blending primary colors, clear and black, will be added this year. Xerox's custom-blended colors allow print providers to match logo colors and other company branding requirements for their clients with a vast number of highlight colors/shades of red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, violet, magenta and brown.
Highlight-color jobs - documents in black plus one other color - make documents more effective by drawing attention to relevant information. The economical addition of color to black-and-white documents can increase the services that a print provider can offer their clients. In the C.P. Bourg booth, the DocuTech 180 Highlight Color System with an inline Xerox Manual + Book Factory, will print a selection from The Little Blue Book of Advertising by Emmy Award-winner Steve Lance, who will sign copies of the book on Wednesday.
Completing the monochrome product portfolio revamp is the single-engine Xerox 495 Continuous Feed Duplex Printer, announced in February. The new 500 image-per-minute digital printer simultaneously prints both sides of an 18" wide web, and features a small-footprint design and innovative flash-fusing technology that results in increased substrate flexibility, and better image quality and productivity than competitive systems.
Pricing and availability
The Xerox Nuvera EA DPS will be available in North America, Europe and developing markets beginning May 15. The Xerox Nuvera 288 DPS is available immediately in North America, Europe and developing markets. The Xerox 4595 and the Xerox 4110 with FreeFlow DocuSP print controller are available immediately in North America. The Xerox 495 Continuous Feed Duplex Printer is available immediately in North America, Europe and developing markets. The products are sold through the Xerox direct sales force, agents and concessionaires.
The U.S. list price for the Xerox Nuvera EA DPS starts at $90,000 (including feeder/scanner, an MFF Finisher and ability to print PostScript). Pricing will vary depending on configuration. The list price for the base configuration of the Xerox Nuvera 288 DPS with two feeders, two finishing modules, an inserter and PostScript is $460,000. The list price for the Xerox 4595 with bypass and base finisher is $53,200, and the list price for the Xerox 4110 with FreeFlow DocuSP print controller and bypass and base finisher is $81,900. List prices for the Xerox DocuTech 128 and 155 base configurations with finishing options start at $325,000 and $420,000, respectively. The list price for the Xerox 495 Continuous Feed Duplex Printer is $425,000.