Product of the Month: Canon Imagepress C850

Canon forayed into the Indian market a decade ago with the installation of the VP 7000 in Delhi at the hands of Sachin Tendulkar in October 2007. It was the seed of Canon’s colour production press in India. It has come a long way since then. 

In September 2014, Canon launched a compact version Imagepress C800 series to cater the customers who were willing to experience the Imagepress technology but with a lower investment. By the end of the year, it registered an impressive 25 installations of the C700/C800 Imagepress production printers throughout India. This machine led to a strong expansion of installations in tier I and II cities, points out director Puneet Datta.

Therefore, expectations were high when Canon followed it up with a new range Imagepress C850/C750/C650 last year. Datta, says, “The C850 has garnered even better acceptance in the market thanks to its small footprint.”

The C850 USP
The Imagepress C850 incorporates a range of “innovative features” such as Canon’s Gloss Optimisation technology, enabling to match the gloss of the toner image to that of the media used, and a 32-beam R-VCSEL red laser to help produce crisp and clear images efficiently at 2400x2400 dpi. “These features are designed to provide offset-like image quality,” promises Datta.

Canon has introduced a new 190lpi dot screen to the pack of screen patterns, which according to Datta enables increased flexibility and the optimised quality closer to offset. The Consistently Vivid (CV) Toner and an Advanced Image Transfer Belt, the C850, according to Datta, can print high-quality, consistent output on a variety of media, including textured stocks.

He says that with these features, users have the ability to enjoy colour consistency for predictable quality output, a necessity of print providers who run repetitive jobs.

The Imagepress C850 operates at print speeds of up to 85 A4 pages per minute in colour and black- and-white. This digital press provides paper feeding with air separation and double sheet detection intended to reduce paper jams and production interruptions.

“First-time-right results with consistent colour and precise registration achieved by the Compact Registration Module help increase the amount of sellable output,” says Datta.
Banner printing

Canon has added an automated duplex feeder for banner sheets to its Imagepress C850 cut-sheet toner press in order to “fully unlock its commercial potential”.

The POD Deck Lite XL-A1 long-sheet feeder is a new accessory that can be retrofitted to existing Imagepress C850s or bought alongside a new machine. It enables automated duplex feeding of 1,000 banner sheets up to 762mm long making possible extended runs of documents, books and graphic arts applications that benefit from a longer sheet.

Datta calls the machine “very much cost effective”. “All updates to our machines come from listening to the market, and this one will help customers with ways to differentiate themselves and grow their market base.”

“You can see bigger-format printing popping up in a variety of markets and the new duplex banner feeder opens up all kinds of lucrative opportunities for every printing house. We are satisfied that it has a broad appeal across markets. Also, applications like short-run production of six-panel brochures, posters and dust jackets.”.

“What it gives you over any competition is the ability to operate on different substrates, particularly textured substrates.”

The POD Deck Lite opens up applications including A4 landscape brochures, extended book covers, tri-fold brochures, and creative direct mail.

Workflow enhancements
Canon has made further additions to its Imagepress C850 family with the introduction of the PrismaSync v6.0 controller, increasing the speed of colour calibration by three times by using one halftone instead of three. It runs colour validation tests such as Fogra and IdeAlliance automatically. It is apparantely, the first DFE-embedded Idealliance G7 certified system, with unique productivity features such as the Job Scheduler and Remote Manager for up to eight hours plan-ahead production.

The C850 comes with an option to select the digital front end to help get the most out of their workflow. Among these options is Canon’s celebrated Prismasync Color Print Server for Imagepress, Imagepress Server F200 or Imagepress Server G200, which is built on EFI’s Fiery FS150 platform.

Inline finishing
A new option for this series is the Booklet Trimmer-F1, which the company says helps save valuable time with a larger trim waste bin and continuous run capability with on-the-fly trim waste removal.

The Imagepress C850 Series supports a variety of in-line finishing options to help expand the offerings of print service providers, including the ability to stack, fold, saddle-stitch, staple, perfect-bind and ring-bind.

Another new option for this Imagepress series will be the Multi-Function Professional Puncher-A1 for die-punching on a wider range of media sizes and weights for A4 and larger, oblong bound books. Using Canon’s die set, this new finishing module can professionally crease documents in-line to produce folded applications, including saddle stitch booklets, with less paper cracking on the spine of the document.

Customer-driven improvements
The new C850 incorporates a range of innovative technologies from small footprint, end-to-end productivity, low power consumption to versatile media handling. Datta says, most of these features are driven by customer feedback. He explains, “Our R&D team in Japan has invested a lot of their time and energy into this device. That’s the reason, there are special tweaks for customers in India and China. And so, for the C850, nine out of the ten most-used textured paper in India can print on a C850.” 

It can print on a variety of media, including uneven media such as textured or recycled substrates, from 52-300gsm.

Datta and the Canon India team is very bullish about the light-mid segment which “is growing rapidly especially in the tier-two and tier-three towns”. 

A significant number of digital colour production presses sold in India are in the 60 to 80 page per minute range and it is the sector where there is most growth. With the C850, Canon hopes to grow at a healthy double-digit.