‘Wow’ factor

A major ‘wow’ factor is the radically different and futuristic look of the Landa range of presses, which are operated via a giant 3m touchscreen running along the front of each machine. Landa’s stated aim is to make printing press operation as intuitive as operating an iPhone. "If they can use a cell phone they can run this machine," he states.

The right-hand side of the display has all the job management features. Jobs are automatically organised into the optimum workflow, but the operator can override this in the case of an urgent job.

The left-hand side of the screen shows the machine functions, such as ink and paper handling. The operator can also choose to display a live camera feed on the touchscreen showing what’s going on inside the machine itself.

When a press is running unattended, it switches into ‘vital signs mode’ and the touchscreen displays giant numbers showing how many minutes and seconds will elapse before the press needs operator intervention, for example more paper or an ink change. This information is also shown on a portable tablet device that can be carried around the workplace. Landa believes a single operator could run as many as three, and possibly even four, presses.

Faith in the vision

Another ‘wow’ factor has been the number of printing companies willing to put hard cash down for the promise of a future product. Hundreds of companies bought into the Landa vision for Nanography and handed over €10,000 (￡8,000) along with their letters of intent to buy machines of one variety or another.

The B1 S10 press has proved by far the most popular choice, with one in every three orders placed for this model. But what exactly are people paying for, apart from a promise?

Landa says those who have placed deposits have been given a general timeframe, and a preliminary specification and price range for their chosen device. "Because the specification isn’t final, the price can’t be, either," he says.

The price at the high end will be "in comparable terms to the equivalent offset presses", yet Landa is expecting to deliver the lowest cost-per-page and cost of ownership when presses begin being used in earnest. The vision is to bring digital printing into the mainstream by making it affordable and viable for run lengths running into thousands.

And it’s noteworthy that these future machines could be Landa’s own brand or co-branded with partners such as Komori, Manroland or Heidelberg. "We can deliver it ourselves or we can pass the LOI on to a partner," states Landa, which opens up a more than nano-sized debate about whether Landa will ever ship its own product.

Some believe Landa will license its know-how and make money from the ink and consumables, leaving its partners to produce the actual printing machinery. And some pundits believe that, come Ipex 2014, the ‘Landa effect’ will be apparent in the number of machines sprouting touchscreen interfaces, even if they’re not of the three-metre-wide variety.

Challenges to come

While Landa clearly wowed audiences and convinced many with the promise of Nanography, products are not set to be commercially available until the end of next year, and there are still plenty of hurdles to overcome before anyone has a saleable Nanographic product.

With so much focus on Nanography’s eco-credentials, what about the recyclability of printed materials produced using the process, especially with concern in the paper recycling industry over the deinkability of inkjet print?

We know that Nanography output cannot be deinked using the same flotation processes used for offset printed papers. Landa is currently working with a number of deinking consortia including the Digital Printing Deinking Alliance (DPDA) to evaluate the different deinking solutions available. "Unlike inkjet, our ink sits on the surface of the paper, which makes it a lot easier," he explains. "I certainly expect our output to be deinkable – it’s just that the parameters are not exact yet."

At Drupa, Landa and his team were upfront about the fact that Nanographic prints currently show very obvious flaws. The samples shown were all striking and colourful full-page images of animals, such as tigers and peacocks. The image subject matter was quite ‘noisy’ in itself and there were no print samples showing flat tints or text.

The print samples featured very obvious banding lines and white spots in the image area where ink was entirely missing (see the images below, which show close-up detail of the samples). Some visitors expressed surprise at just how poor the print quality was – despite the attempts to manage expectations, although others praised the image intensity and brightness of the colours despite the flaws.

Landa says the current faults are to do with the ejecting process, and are not fundamental issues involving the transfer of the print image from the blanket. "The process is not fully optimised yet. We have flaws and we are very open about it. This all takes testing and it’s not perfect yet."

Solving these quality issues, and ensuring the machinery itself will be suitably robust in operation, will be occupying the Landa team over the coming months. But they are confident that they will achieve commercialisation in the timescale envisaged, and that the so-called ‘second digital revolution’ will begin in earnest next year.