Inkjet & Digital Printing

Full-service print company first in Canada to acquire innovative waterless inkjet technology: the Xerox CiPress 500

Wednesday 17. July 2013 - R.E. Gilmore Corporation - a full service, digital print company - was interested in the Xerox CiPress 500 Production Inkjet System before it even came to market. The company figured the world's only high-speed waterless inkjet, with its powerful twin engine configuration, could take the company's transpromo business, which already produces millions of promotion pieces annually, to an even greater scale of production and quality.

Gilmore, the first customer in Canada to purchase the CiPress 500, recognized that the press’ fast production time, outstanding color quality and built-in automated closed-loop self-correcting controls would improve uptime, productivity and consistency. The device will be installed at Gilmore Doculink in Ottawa, Canada, one of the company’s five operating divisions, and will be used among its sister companies.
“We constantly look to Xerox to help us push the envelope, keep us competitive and improve the value we bring to our customers,” said Brian Wright, vice president of operations, Gilmore. “The CiPress 500 does all of those things.”
Printing 500 feet or 2,180 full-color pages per minute, the twin-engine device efficiently creates personalized marketing, transpromo and publishing pieces – one of the main reasons Gilmore acquired the device. Wright estimates that in coming months the company will transfer all of its transpromo work from other digital print platforms to the CiPress 500.
“The test phase reinforced that we made the right decision – we are using less ink but printing at higher volumes, all while improving our environmental footprint,” said Wright.
Building from its patented solid ink technology, the Xerox CiPress 500 supports printing on low-cost, plain paper without ink showing through. This – together with self-monitoring and auto-correcting production controls – results in a workhorse device reliable enough to print tens of millions of pages every month. Xerox’s FreeFlow Print Server enhances productivity by handling complex variable jobs without sacrificing print speed.
Additional features of the press include:
Patented waterless ink system removes the need for specially treated paper, extra print heads and bonding agents. Waterless inks are easy to handle and replace.
Reliable, flat sheet output – cockle and curl are significantly reduced because water and ink are not used in the printing process. High energy, costly dryer systems are not required.
Intelligent scan bar detects and corrects missing jets automatically.
Piezo drop on demand print heads produce consistent density and uniformity of colour output. Automated print head maintenance saves operators time and labour.