Kodak launches 410mpm inkjet Prosper 7000 Turbo

Kodak has unveiled its new high speed Kodak Prosper 7000 Turbo Press, offering printing speeds of up to 410 metres a minute, or up to 5,523 A4 pages per minute, which it claims is almost 35 per cent faster than its nearest competitor.

Kodak's new inkjet web press uses Kodak Stream Inkjet technology, and says Kodak, enables commercial, publishing and newspaper printers to “compete more effectively with offset and to shift more long run jobs from conventional printing processes to inkjet.”

Prosper 7000 Turbo supports a maximum web width of 648mm, with a variable cutoff length up to 1,372mm, while printing on a wide range of coated and uncoated stocks, newsprint, specialty papers, as well as recycled papers.

Offering three optimised print modes, the Prosper 7000 Turbo Press meets the specific requirements of different applications. Kodak says this allows printers to optimise their production process to always print at the best combination of speed and resolution. The Quality mode, which is “roughly comparable” to offset printing using a 200lpi screen, is best for direct mailings, catalogues and magazines. The Performance mode, which is the offset equivalent 133lpi, is for textbooks, fiction books and other medium ink coverage applications, and the Turbo mode, the equivalent of 85-100 lpi, is for newspaper printing with low ink coverage.

The Prosper 7000 Turbo Press uses eco-friendly, water-based Kodak nanoparticulate pigment CMYK inks. The inks offer a “wide” colour gamut and, due to their proprietary ink formulations, support efficient drying even at peak press speeds.
The Prosper 7000 Turbo has interstation drying using near infrared (NIR) technology. This drying solution enables the press to keep up with any of the print modes “to ensure the highest quality output” at the given speed.

To safeguard consistently high quality, even with the longest print runs, the new press features the Kodak Intelligent Print System. This patented solution automatically takes care of monitoring and optimisation of stitching, colour-to-colour, and front-to-back registration.

“The game-changing speed of the Prosper 7000 Turbo will help commercial, publishing and newspaper printers increase efficiency by shifting more long-run jobs from conventional printing processes to inkjet,” said Jim Continenza, Kodak’s executive chairman and CEO. “We believe digital technology will grow in importance as a complement to offset as ongoing supply chain issues continue to increase the cost of prepress. This new press reflects our continued commitment to investing in innovation that helps our customers succeed as the industry evolves."