Heidelberg launches Versafire EV

Heidelberg is launching its new digital press, the Versafire EV, which the company says is designed for use at entry level as well as by experienced digital printing providers.

The Versafire EV comes from Heidelberg’s partnership with Ricoh, and based on the Japanese manufacturer’s four-colour Pro C7200 and five-colour Pro C7200X.

The Versafire EV now offers a total of five colours. Along with white, clear toner, neon yellow and neon pink, its new invisible red is said to provide additional embellishment options. The company says in daylight, it has a slightly glossy effect and under UV light, the toner shines bright red. Heidelberg says the use of invisible red provides protection against copying and is particularly suitable for security-relevant applications. The five colours are said to facilitate a wide variety of creative applications, such as printing luminescent posters, invitations, admission tickets, wristbands, bright advertising brochures and security elements on printed products.

The company says the new Versafire EV is able to print white first and the CMYK process colours on top, creating strong luminous images when printing on coloured substrates and achieving new unusual effects. Where previously several processes were required, Heidelberg claims it is all done now in a single pass.

Stephan Plenz, member of the management board for Digital Technology at Heidelberg says, “The Versafire EV gives our customers a flexible production system that is specially designed to ideally meet the requirements in the graphic arts industry and that they can use to further enhance their digital business model as a result of diversification and optimization.”

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Heidelberg says the new automatic inline calibration and inline register provide a high degree of stability, precision and improved quality. The company says inline colour measurement and automatic calibration take place ahead of the printing process and ensure constant colour stability across the entire run. The printer is said to give high image quality with a new resolution of 4,800 × 2,400 dpi. 

The company says the Versafire EV has an increased printing speed of 85 or 95 A4 pages per minute and processes grammages of up to 360 gsm, ensuring a high level of productivity. Furthermore, the system is able to print banners up to a length of 700 mm (duplex) and as much as 1,260 mm (simplex).

The Prinect Digital Frontend (DFE), developed by Heidelberg supposedly allows intelligent integration into digital and offset printing processes. The company says using this DFE the Versafire EV can be easily integrated into the existing workflow of a print shop at the same time that it processes variable print data considerably faster.

Another new feature is said to be a 17-inch touchscreen to control the machine and the print jobs directly from the DFE ensuring that the operator can keep an eye on everything.

Since the middle of last year, Heidelberg says more and more customers have attended Versafire production training sessions, gaining valuable detailed knowledge about setting up media and the machine itself. In addition, the company says customers receive a matching software to control media set up, the Media Management Tool. The assistant-aided user interface enables the time and work needed for setting up substrates to be significantly reduced. All settings are said to able to be saved, exported and imported, as well as loaded onto other Versafire machines.