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HP’s offering was undoubtedly one of the stars of the show and unusual among the inkjet machines in that the press ran. Samples could be taken away and HP has announced where the beta site machines are going. It committed to making the press commercially available in the second half of 2009. One of the beta machines is heading for the UK to CPI on-demand book division Antony Rowe and, for a digital press to have impressed chief executive Mike Taylor that much, it must have something in its favour, principally the freedom from the click charge of toner machines. With its 762mm-wide web and 122m per minute speed, it’s a match for an offset sheetfed B2 machine in terms of throughput and HP demonstrated a wider 914mm wide machine at Drupa to show it could build wider arrays. The duplex configuration and talk of a monthly duty cycle of 70m A4 impressions per month shows this is a machine meant for business.

The technology at the heart of the machine is HP’s thermal printheads as used in desktop, MFP and wide-format machines. Thermal printheads mean a water-based ink, but with a pre-print bonding agent applied by the press it can print onto standard uncoated stocks.

The use of thermal technology means printheads are consumables, though user-replaceable ones, and HP has done a lot of work to increase the longevity of the heads for use in professional print products, not just the Inkjet Web Press, but also its wide-format Designjet LC65500.

Format: 762mm wide web
Size: 762 wide
Colours: CMYK
Speed: 122m per minute (2,600 A4ppm)
Technology: Thermal drop-on-demand
Shipping: H2 2009
Price: $2.6m (twin engine duplex)