Product category:
General Print Supplies, Services for Printers
News Release from: Hewlett-Packard | Subject: HP Indigo press w3250
Edited by the Printingtalk Editorial
Team on 12 February 2007
HP Digital Press Creates Educational
Books
Mercury Print Productions, a Rochester, New York (USA) graphic communications firm, has installed an HP Indigo press w3250 to create books for the educational market and other publishing industries.
Mercury Print Productions, a Rochester, New York (USA) graphic communications firm, has installed an HP Indigo press w3250 to create books for the educational market and other publishing industries The Indigo press w3250 enables Mercury to produce textbooks, teacher's editions, workbooks and other material for the nation's leading educational publishers
This article was originally published on Printingtalk on 13 Mar 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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The press is claimed to be one of the world's most productive offset-quality digital colour production systems and offers spot-colour printing of Pantone colours using HP Indichrome off-press custom-mixed inks.
The custom-mixed inks enable Mercury to meet important customer requirements that cannot be satisfied with digital presses from other manufacturers, claimed HP.
An in-line primer included with the press enables printing on virtually any standard offset paper or publisher house stock, added the company.
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Because the Indigo press w3250 can print on stocks as thin as 27lb text, it is suitable for the lighter textbook stocks commonly used in textbook publishing.
Alon Bar-Shany, vice president and general manager of the Indigo division at HP, said: "When we launched the HP Indigo press w3250 last year, we were excited about the impact it would have on the book industry.
By enabling the printer to match colours and offer a wide range of papers, the versatility of the Indigo press w3250 .provides a competitive advantage to Mercury, increasing the overall value the company provides to the marketplace, whilst also decreasing the press's total cost of ownership." By providing a new alternative to cost-effectively print different quantities of books in colour and black and white, digital publishing is one of the innovations helping advance the publishing industry in to the digital age, said HP.
External influences, such as 'No Child Left Behind' (NCLB) legislation have driven the need for change, with state boards of education and individual school districts now producing their own versions of textbooks to meet specific curriculum needs.
HP believes that digital colour printing enables those books to be cost-effectively produced in appropriate quantities, whilst the company's Indigo technology ensures that the books continue to have the look and feel of offset printing.
For Mercury, NCLB legislation led to the establishment of a separate book division in 2006 following installation of the Indigo press w3250.
Now, the company serves an educational market that is increasingly demanding digital printing.
HP Indichrome off-press ink-mixing enables Mercury to take advantage of a range of colours that is unmatched in the digital publishing environment, claimed HP.
Mercury purchases Pantone-licensed HP Electro Inks in 50 different Pantone colours from the Printing Applications Laboratory at the nearby Rochester Institute of Technology.
That capability gives Mercury the power to produce educational materials in two colours, as opposed to a costlier multi-colour process needed to match specific hues.
Christian Schamberger, vice president of operations at Mercury Print Book Division, commented: "In many cases, the materials we print are designed for two-colour offset, with different grades of a particular textbook series colour-coded by a specific highlight colour.
Printing digitally using a Pantone colour ink - something that is possible only with HP Indigo - is especially important for us.
Whilst in many cases it is possible to match these colour values in a process mix, the most cost-effective solution for our customers by far is to print these jobs in two colours with a spot-colour ink." Designed for production of up to four million four-color A4 and letter-size pages per month, the web-fed Indigo press w3250 is described by HP as providing offset-quality digital colour production for commercial print, direct mail, book and manual publishing and photo-related services.
Printing at claimed speeds of up to 136 four-colour pages per minute (ppm) and up to 272ppm for two colours, it produces graphics, vibrant colour and sharp text for the most demanding print service provider or print customer, added HP.
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