The digital print pioneer has designed new scalable presses to enable businesses to enter the digital label market, and grow their machine with the business. Wayne Robinson writes.
Xeikon has launched two new digital label presses – the Xeikon CX30 and Xeikon CX50 – describing them as entry level presses to sit between its Rex (pre-owned) range and its high speed CX300 and CX500.
Xeikon says it has designed and developed the two new presses to suit any label printer operating on middle capacity, that is between 20,000-40,000sqm or 30,000-55,000sqm a month in all end-use segments, but especially in the pharmaceutical, food, and wine and spirit label sectors.
The new presses take the Xeikon digital label printing range to ten different models, with the company supplying both dry and toner and UV inkjet technologies.
Trevor Crowley, sales general manager at Xeikon ANZ said, “The new printers offer either narrow web 330mm or wide web 520mm, and are scalable all the way up to the CX300 and CX500.
“They offer printers of all types the opportunity to enter the digital label market at an entry level investment price, with all the acclaimed Xeikon technology.”
Building on its sixth generation platform, and based on Cheetah 2.0 technology with new generation interfaces and cloud connection, these new presses are designed to offer maximum overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
Xeikon says the Cheetah 2.0 series offers competitive running costs, and says printers have the opportunity to successfully expand the capabilities of their press as required, by upgrading either in speed or width, or both.
Crowley says, “The Xeikon CX30 and Xeikon CX50 are an appropriate choice for printers and converters looking at digital for the first time with future plans to expand and grow their operation – also for online label printers who are seeing their business explode.”
Both the Xeikon CX30 and Xeikon CX50 are ‘middle capacity’ presses that can be upgraded on site. For higher speeds, both the Xeikon CX30 and Xeikon CX50 can be upgraded from 20mpm to 30mpm.
For greater width, the Xeikon CX30 (330mm) can be upgraded to the Xeikon CX50 (520mm) or the Xeikon CX500 which gives both the greater width and greater speed.
Cheetah 2.0 technology is based on Xeikon’s scalable press architecture that includes five print stations and a full rotary process with a variable repeat length. Each station uses Xeikon’s dry toner process, and a variety of print widths up to 512mm, using an LED imaging head operating at 1200×3600 dpi, and says Xeikon, delivering offset/gravure image quality.
The two new presses use Xeikon’s QB dry toner based on Cheetah 2.0 technology, which Xeikon says “excels in the digital print landscape by offering superior colour consistency across the web and ensuring the highest volume of output with reduced waste”.
The toner is available in CMYK, plus red, blue, green, orange, extra magenta (gamut extension colours), super black, and technical colours such as one-pass opaque white, UV and reflective clear, as well as colours produced at the customer’s request.
Xeikon says the QB-I toner achieves “top quality results” on a broad range of standard flexo substrates. It says the pigments used in the QB toner are of the highest grade and food safe, and also offer the highest levels of light fastness in the market.
Pictured: Competitive running costs: The new entry-level CX30 and CX 50 presses are based on Cheetah 2.0 technology.
This article has been published in the September-October print issue of PKN Packaging News, on page 50.
