WOW what a first day…
Drupa is living up to its reputation of bringing new technology to the industry. Historically companies have introduced new technologies to Drupa that will are expected to hit the market by the following Drupa (4 years out). Depending on where products are in their development cycle the 4 years could be 2 or even one year away. This is what we saw today. Unfortunately, due to flight delays our time on the floor for day one was cut to about 3 hours, but what a 3 hours! First we met an old client who is working on a new technology which will be ready to be shown in a year or two (with technology this could be twice that). This company is well under the radar of users and most technology developers as well but the promise of this new digital printing technology is quite interesting (which is a step or two before ‘promising’). I can not say much about it but we promise we will be keeping our eyes on it for you.
After seeing the ‘future’ we went to the place on the floor that seemed to be BUZZING, you guessed it, the Landa booth. Unable to catch the entire presentation by Benny Landa, due to our arrival delays, we were able to see the new presses that all the hype is surrounding. We have to say we were impressed!
The user interface strikes you right off the bat, it looks like the workstations that Jordy and Data worked at on the Enterprise. The whole front panel is the screen. The user interface is similar to a big iPad with icons that move by using one or two fingers, so clean and simple a child could operate it. Short of its sexiness, it will be up to the market to tell us if it is practical in a production environment.
We did learn that the paper handling of the S10 (S for Sheet) press designed for folding carton production, was engineered by Komori, a company who knows about sheetfed carton presses. The S10 is looking at Beta launch in 2013, and we can tell by the print samples (which they display on the wall for all to see) that there is still some work to be done from an image streaking perspective. The image intensity and density of color seems to be very good but they freely admit there is still work to be done and will hold off pushing it into the market until these issues have been addressed. We will spend more time in the Landa booth over the next four days and continue to report what we see. We have yet to report on the Flexible Packaging press, so stay tuned!
Landa Booth at Drupa 2012
Landa S10 Carton Press
Landa Nano Ink
HP Press Conference
From the Landa Booth we headed to the HP Press Conference. We felt a little bad for HP – particularly the Indigo division – as they have some HUGE news of their own which has been a bit overshadowed by the Landa announcements. We had the privilege to attend their Pre-Drupa event in March to get a sneak peak of the new press line (read about it here). We have dubbed the 0000 (or ought 4) the 10000 (no comas) a 20 by 30 inch sheet fed press, the 20000 off the same engine which is a web press for the Flexible Packaging market and the 30000 for the Folding Carton market. We will be spending time in their booth the next day or two, and we will report on the latest news in detail. Don’t worry, we won’t forget to review the label press innovations based on their current engine – that should peak your interest enough to tune in tomorrow!
So, for a short day there was much to see and talk about. For up to the minute images and coverage, follow @DigitalKevin on Twitter or hashtag #DrupaPack. Be sure to continue to check out the Digital4Packaging Blog at Package Printing Magazine’s website.
