The Riso ComColor was the cynosure of all eyes at the show. The high-speed inkjet printers have seen 150 installations since its launch four years ago on Indian territory. The kit employs 24 in-line Piezo drop-on-demand print heads. Each of the four colours (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black – and in the case of the ComColor GD Series, the fifth colour of grey) has six print heads in a row imaging the page.

What the PrintWeek India team noticed was: the paper moves beneath the print heads the print heads lay down the individual colours that make up the four-colour print: cyan, black, magenta, yellow. The fixed position of the print head makes possible the high printing speeds found in ComColor inkjet printers, and it also results in a longer lifespan for the equipment.

"The overall image quality is much better and it produces very good solids and halftones," said a Riso spokesperson.

Pricing was described as "extremely competitive" and is in the range of rupees ten lakhs. Inkjet printers are less expensive to acquire and use than toner-based devices. The reason according to Riso is, "the heat used by toner-based printers to fuse applied toner and fix it to the page causes these machines to be more vulnerable to failure and leads to more downtime, higher service costs, and shorter life spans." 

Toner is incompatible with plastic and many paper types, and it is prone to cracking and flaking when folded or put through finishing devices such as postal sorting equipment. According to Riso, "Their heat requirements also make toner-based printers far less energy-efficient than inkjet devices."

PrintWeek India readers will recall that the Japanese manufacturer showcased its new flagship ComColor GD9630 model at the Dusseldorf expo during Drupa 2016, with the 160ppm machine billed as the world’s fastest cut-sheet printer. The GD9630 uses Riso’s Forcejet single-pass inkjet technology with a five-colour CMYK plus grey system. It has an optional high-capacity feeder and stacker.