Andy Tribute on Heidelberg's LinoPrint and DriveLine. And why I love enigneers.

The thing I like about Andy Tribute is that he writes like a journalist but seems to think like an engineer. Plus he is a visiting Professor at University of the Arts London.

Some snippets of today's commentary follow. The full read is at WhatTheyThink:

. . . First customer installations of a pilot series of DriveLine printing systems for four-color printing were taken into operation in June 2009.. . .

Other inkjet web fed label presses such as the EFI Jetrion 4000 and the Sun Chemical Solarjet only print a narrow web up to 6.5 inches in width. The market leader in digital label printing is HP Indigo and their latest press is the HP Indigo WS6000. This in four-color mode prints at a speed of 30 meters/min with a print width of 12.48 inches. The other key player in this market is Xeikon with the Xeikon 3300 press that prints at 19.2 meters/min.

So my take away is:
Heidelberg 13.38 ins @ 60meters/min
HP 12.48 ins @ 30meters/min
EFI 6.5 inches @ ?
Xeikon ? @19.2 meters / min

Engineers like to talk about productivity. It's just common sense.