Five Drums Give Wide Color Gamut

In a Rochester, NY suburb, Kodak's Digital Printing Solutions Group's scientific, engineering, manufacturing, toner development and customer support teams—all under one roof—are bringing new opportunities to color printing. Its NexPress digital production color press is a special dry-ink digital printing device.

The NexPress is proven in commercial applications, where machines frequently output one million impressions monthly. Generated from an earlier alliance with Heidelberg, NexPress was born from super parents: the world's leading color imaging company and the renowned German offset press manufacturer. Both proudly delivered a super-hybrid industrial color printing baby at Drupa 2000. Kodak established sole ownership in 2004 when Heidelberg shifted its digital print involvement to hybrid workflow for offset and digital presses. Kodak inherited a customer base with 500-plus installations.

Unique among digital color platforms, the NexPress features a five-color (pentachrome), LED-based dry toner, digital offset electrophotographic perfecting engine. It now boasts a customer-configurability that allows for coating, glossing and gamut expansion, providing numerous options.

High Information Capacity Printing is a patented technology that maintains the highest amount of data throughout the image chain, from input through output. This is enabled through an eight-bit depth input and eight-bit depth output capability. The power of NexPress eight-bit depth output is that it delivers 256 gray levels per pixel in each of the color separations. Combined with the 600×600 dpi resolution, this equates to an output information capacity of 14,284,828 levels per square centimeter for each color separation. The higher the information capacity, the closer the output represents the original intent.

Digital presses offered by other major manufacturers claim eight-bit depth technology, but only on the input side. These presses have one-bit depth output, which delivers only one gray level (black or white pixel) per pixel. Despite the higher resolution, their information capacity is significantly less. As a result, the NexPress provides great color image rendering strength.

Although it's a dry toner-based process, NexPress exceeds the color gamut of offset. It also can print a greater black density than offset. The color chart shows the NexPress has a 50% increase in color gamut with the fifth color option, compared with the four-color digital process. Applying clear dry ink to a four-color process followed by glossing treatment in a near-line unit gives a uniform enhanced gloss, and an additional 10% gamut expansion over four-color.

[Note: While the chart shows the color space that is obtainable, it may not all be attained in a single press pass.]