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Chromapress Continuing its commitment to digital color printing customers, Agfa has recently announced the release of two newly developed consumables and an upgrade option supporting the Chromapress digital printing system: an advanced microtoner, an improved developer, and a high gloss option/field upgrade. The use of these three new enhancements contributes to higher quality output, a greater range of applications, and increased productivity for Chromapress--making digital printing an ever-more viable and profitable option for print providers.

Chromapress is a revolutionary digital printing system that handles a variety of jobs requiring high-quality, four-color printing directly from PostScript files. It is a complete system for efficient digital printing, including advanced front-end components such as a full suite of Power Macintosh-based software for workflow management, a Power Macintosh-based press server, and a PostScript Level 2 PowerRIP. The award-winning four-color print engine offers fast, full-duplex web-feed output. Chromapress provides high-quality color printing specifically designed for short runs and on-demand document production. With the use of Personalizer software, materials printed on Chromapress can be individually customized on the fly.

New Advanced Microtoner and Longer Lasting Developer
The new microtoner reduces toner consumption up to 20% per page, while the new developer provides up to three times the life of the previous developer. In addition, these new consumables increase the number of possible applications through increased toner coverage capabilities for each page. The developer's longer life reduces the frequency of periodic maintenance, thereby improving ease of operation and increasing productivity. Agfa designed and developed the new microtoner and developer specifically for Agfa's Chromapress and Xeikon print engines, including the Xeikon DCP-1 and IBM 3170.

"As the sole manufacturer of these new microtoner and developer products for the Chromapress and Xeikon engines, Agfa continues to respond to market demand for a more cost effective, higher-performance printing process," says Bob Barbera, Agfa senior business line manager for Chromapress. "This new generation of consumables reduces variable cost by approximately one-third, thus adding an improved economic model to other well-established advantages of digital printing, such as short run color printing, on-demand document production, and personalized printing."

OmniGloss: Offset-Like Finish
OmniGloss is a high gloss printing feature that provides a higher quality offset-like finish for digital color print output. An additional benefit of the new option is that Chromapress can now handle stock from 60 through 250 g/m2, an increase from the previous limit of 200 g/m2. OmniGloss provides both controllable gloss and enhanced color saturation through a newly designed, two-step fusing system. In addition, the new web pull motor installed as part of the option allows the use of heavier stocks--a significant advantage when printing covers, business cards, display materials, and other similar items. As an easy add-on feature for Chromapress, OmniGloss will be available as an upgrade option for existing users as well as an option for new customers.

"The use of digital color printing for appearance-critical applications has spurred the need for offset quality output," said Paul Willems, Agfa director of marketing, digital printing. "In combination with heavier stocks, we are significantly widening the application areas for Chromapress. This brings Chromapress to a new level, which makes the system unique in its class and provides additional value for our customers. Developed specifically to work with the new generation of toner and developer we've announced, OmniGloss provides outstanding output quality comparable to traditional offset printing, but with the decided advantages of all-digital technology."

OmniGloss benefits users in the following ways:

  • Allows tuning of gloss characteristics for individual papers
  • Allows use of stocks up to 250 g/m2
  • Provides enhanced color saturation
  • Improves printing on coated papers
  • Gives better scratch resistance
  • Maintains higher moisture content for easier finishing
  • Improves print quality on transparency material


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