HP has announced a new inkjet web press, the PageWide Advantage 2200 series, a 20 inch wide press that is targeted at publishing, direct mail, and commercial print.
As with the T200 series, this is a single-engined web-fed press able to print to both sides of a roll across media from 203 to 558mm wide. However, this represents a brand new, more compact design. The printbars are arranged on a single but quite wide arch, which makes for a much shorter line. There appears to be a complex paper path as the first side is printed on one half of the arch, then the paper fed through the drying area and back around underneath the arch to a turn bar that takes the roll back to the other half of the arch so that the underside can be printed alongside the first before returning back through the drying area.
For the printheads, HP has opted to use its HighDefinition Nozzle Architecture or HDNA heads. These have a native resolution of 2400 nozzles per inch, which HP says includes 8x nozzle redundancy. These heads print a 108mm wide print swathe. These are thermal printheads, meaning that they will have to be replaced at regular intervals though HP has done a good job of extending the life of these heads.
There’s a choice of drying configurations, which directly affects the range of media that the press can handle though does not change the overall print speed or the duty cycle. Essentially, applications that require higher ink coverage will need more drying power since more ink equates to more water on the media that has to be removed. Thus the basic model comes with a standard drying module, or High Efficiency Drying system, that’s said to recirculate up to 80 percent of the air that’s heated during the drying process. This version prints to offset uncoated, inkjet treated and ColorPro media. It will handle paper weights from 40 to 160gsm but HP recommends that customers test media between 40 and 60gsm and 105 to 160gsm for each application.
Annette Friskopp, Global Head and General Manager at HP PageWide. “HP has listened to our customers, and we realize ease of use and up-time are critical success factors. This new press offers configurations to enable customers to optimize the press for their quality, productivity, versatility, and economics to grow their digital production businesses.”
In many ways, this new press is more of an evolution of the T200 series, a Friskopp explained: “We listened to what the customers wanted, realised we had the innovation and the capability to make an entirely new platform to meet those needs.” The new press appears use the same basic imaging system – the same printheads and ink – but to have creatively rethought the duplexing architecture and the drying system to come up with a new, more interesting platform that should take up a lot less space.
Friskopp also stated: “We will continue to support and upgrade the T200 series.” HP has not discussed the pricing so far but is likely to charge a premium for the Advantage 2200 over the T200 series, allowing the company to position the older press as an entry level model.
The PageWide Advantage 2200 should be available worldwide from HP from October 2022.
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