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The new Canon ProStream 3000 series is the latest for the ProStream family, which was first introduced in 2017 (i.e., the ProStream 1000) and aimed to address roll-fed inkjet market demand around better productivity on a large variety of media and lower energy consumptions. The new ProStream 3000 comes in two devices: the 3080 (80 meters per minute/262 feet per minute) and 3133 (133 meters per minute/436 feet per minute).
Productivity Enhancements
The impressive speed of some roll-fed inkjet presses in the market has the potential to disappoint when using certain media types and ink coverages while printing at the highest resolution possible. For Canon, large ink coverage has never been a problem as they keep the press at a regular speed. Their biggest challenge, however, was around heavier media weight (251-300 gsm) where the speed dropped significantly. Even though Canon claims overall up to 25% speed increase on the new 3000 on heavier media vs. its ProStream predecessors, the increase could be even bigger in some particular paper weights.
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Part of that productivity boost is due to the new redesign and placements of the dryers within the system. The dryers have been modified in size, number, and location. Even though the dryers are the same, these changes optimize drying effectiviness and therefore increase productivity. The cooling system has also been improved as it contributes to the enhanced productivity on heavy media by moving from cooling air systems to drums (thereby increasing efficiency).
Even though the new ProStream has the same max heavy media weight capacity (300 gsm) as the previous ProStreams, Canon is expecting that will increase in the near future
The redesign of the new ProStream has a shorter paper path on the first print tower, which makes the press slightly shorter. Besides reducing its physical footprint, which could be relevant for some PSPs, the most important reason for the shorter first tower is that requires less drying while printing on the first side of the paper before the job moves to the duplex module (2nd tower) where both side impressions are finished and secured.
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Cost and Sustainability
The new 3000 also brings a few improvements related to cost and sustainability, which always plays strong into any PSP buying criteria:
Last but not least, another saving can be applied in terms of primer as the new ProStream with its smart color grip can apply different amount of primer for unprinted and printed areas. This could reduce primer costs on the unprinted areas except for some papers and mainly on large ink coverage jobs where 100% ofthe primer on the unprinted areas could be needed to keep the quality high.
Keypoint Intelligence Opinion
Production inkjet keeps growing as it shifts more pages from offset to digital by enhancing productivity and lowering costs. Being able to keep press speeds up regardless of ink coverage, print resolution, and paper types is imperative to increase productivity and shift more impressions from offset to digital. Even though offset ink costs are much lower than inkjet (and that might never change), closing the gap as much as possible is also critical to shift more volumes from offset to digital as well as reducing dryer energy consumptions which impacts the cost and the environment.
The good news for digital is that offset plates and paper prices have risen, driving better crossover points to digital—especially around binding applications that have a large number of pages that require more make readies and, therefore, more plates and paper waste. In addition, offset skill operator labor shortages also favor digital, particularly for larger production presses.
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