Indigo Digital Press
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Indigo is the name given to a series of Digital Offset Printing Presses made by Hewlett-Packard in Israel.
The main uses for the Indigo Presses include general commercial printing, Industrial, or Packaging Print, Direct Mail, Personalisation / Versioning, and Web to Print.
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[edit] Technology
The technology used is based around their ElectroInk technology, which uses small colour particles suspended in Imaging Oil (Isopar) that can be attracted or repelled by means of a voltage differential. The ink forms a very thin and smooth plastic layer on the paper surface. The fact that these particles are so small ensures that the printed image does not mask the underlying surface roughness/gloss of the paper, as can be possible with some toner based processes, bringing Indigo printing closer in appearance to conventional offset lithography, whereby Ink is actually absorbed into the paper.
HP provides the option for users to mix their own ink colours to match Pantone references. This is common with non-digital offset litho presses, and is one of the features that distinguish them from other manufacturers.Colours are mixed in an 11 colours (from the 15 original) Pantone spectrum offline, ink mixing station. Users can also order special pre-mixed colours from HP Indigo, for example fluorescent pink. Indigo presses are available in configurations supporting four,five,six or seven colours.
[edit] History
The name of the press series, Indigo, comes from a company formed by Benny Landa in 1977, with the aim of creating photocopiers. However, the development of ElectroInk technology pushed him to create an Offset Press replacing the traditional ink with the new technology. The E-Print 1000 was the result, released in 1993, a plateless digital offset press.
[edit] Current
HP, a long-term R&D partner of Indigo, acquired the business in 2002. There are several versions of the HP Indigo Press, which can be broadly grouped by the Printing Engine (Series 1, 2) and by application - either Commercial (sheet-fed, mainly for paper printing), or Industrial (web-fed, labeling and packaging).
Operators are trained by HP, at specialist centres either in Maastricht (NL), Barcelona (ESP), Boise (ID) or Andover (MA) in the U.S.. There are two main courses, initially a certified operator qualification and, once some experience has been gained with day-to-day maintenance issues, an advanced (also known as DPP or shared maintenance) course.
The Series 2 printing engine can be easily differentiated from the original format by the double sized PIP (dynamic plate), which allows the press to run twice as fast. Current models in this series include the HP Indigo Press 5500, 3500 and w3250 (Commercial) and HP Indigo Press ws4500 (Industrial). Previous Series 2 models included the UltraStream 2000, HP Indigo Press 3000, 3050, w3200, 5000, HP Indigo Press ws4000 and ws4050.
HP will be introducing the upcoming Series 3 engine at Drupa 2008. The first model to be introduced will be the HP Indigo 7000 Digital Press (Commercial).
[edit] Criticism
Early incarnations of the press were prone to suffer from banding, particularly about 100mm from the trailing edge, as well as ink adhesion problems. However with newer models these issues have been resolved and would only be seen in unusual circumstances, for example if the operator had the press incorrectly configured. The quality is not as good as offset presses and is not used for high end publishing.
