Why sustainability matters when printing in high quantities

The future of production printing belongs to inkjet. Unlike toner printers and offset presses, this technology has the potential to mature and gain market share. In the past, inkjet was limited to small devices for use at home or in the office, because it was better suited to convenience than high-speed printing. Innovation in the industry has pushed inkjet to new levels of speed and efficiency, and it now provides a healthy middle ground between toner and offset by combining the best of both worlds.

Everything is going digital these days, and the same is true for printing. As consumer trends change, companies need the ability to respond with higher volumes and faster turnaround speeds, as well as personalized content that takes advantage of all the data they collect. While average job lengths are falling, the number of jobs is on the rise, which is incompatible with the way offset presses work. They take too long to set up, you can’t switch easily from one job to the next, and you can’t include variable data. Toner printers can do these things, but only for low-volume work, as the costs per page increase substantially once output exceeds a few thousand sheets.

Inkjet therefore emerged as the best alternative, bringing high speed and productivity to digital printing. At Kyocera, we have plentiful experience producing inkjet printheads, and our knowledge of the industry revealed an opportunity. We decided to enter the production printing market with the TASKalfa Pro 15000c, our first high-volume inkjet device that holds no punches in terms of speed and energy efficiency. Our ultimate goal is to make production printing more sustainable, enabling companies to internalize their operations affordably.

High output

The TASKalfa Pro 15000c is so fast it could give Usain Bolt a run for his money. Designed for speed, it’s capable of warming up from standby in just 60 seconds, meaning less time waiting and more time printing. For comparison, an offset press requires up to 20 minutes to prepare before you can start printing, because there are so many moving parts and settings to adjust. Can you imagine how much time you’d waste if you had to spend 20 whole minutes calibrating everything between one job and the next?

Once it’s warmed up, it takes less than 5 seconds to produce the first impression. On an offset device you’d have to wait a lot longer, and if there were any adjustments to make, you’d spend another 20 minutes setting it up again. The TASKalfa Pro 15000c prints the first sheet in under 5 seconds, so you can see everything’s in order and continue to print the other few thousand. The rest of the job will be finished before you know it, since the device is capable of producing 150 sheets a minute.

These high speeds make the TASKalfa Pro 15000c extremely productive, capable of hitting output levels of 1,000,000 impressions a month. In terms of maintenance, inkjet devices are generally less prone to breakdowns than offset or toner because they have fewer moving parts. Although this is our first dedicated production print device, Kyocera has been supplying printhead technology to the biggest names in the industry for a long time. We invest all of our experience and expertise into every product, so when you see the Kyocera logo, you know you can rely on it to perform.

Low consumption

If reliability is recognized as one of the hallmarks of Kyocera, then the other is respect for the environment. Kyocera’s founder, Dr. Inamori made doing the right thing as a human being one of the cornerstones of our philosophy, and this thinking continues to guide our decisions today. Eco-friendly designs therefore run throughout our entire product range, and the TASKalfa Pro 15000c is no exception. This device is carefully engineered to consume less electricity than its competitors.

In addition to minimizing energy consumption, the TASKalfa Pro 15000c requires fewer spare parts and maintenance compared to other production printers. We already mentioned that inkjet devices have fewer moving parts than toner and offset devices, reducing the risk of malfunction and paper jams. However, it also means that on the rare occasion that the device does require maintenance, it’s quick and easy to fix. You won’t need to replace an entire block of the machine just because one little component isn’t working.

Sustainable solutions

The TASKalfa Pro 15000c strikes the perfect balance between high output and low consumption. Advances in inkjet technology give today’s companies the ability to print variable data in high volumes and with great turnaround speeds, but Kyocera’s contribution to production printing goes one step further. This device is engineered for efficiency.

Able to warm up and start printing in just 60 seconds, the TASKalfa Pro 15000c feels right at home in any paper-heavy environment. What’s more, the Kyocera promise of reliability ensures that it will keep on working. Limited moving parts make maintenance less of a concern, and if anything does break down, parts can be repaired or replaced without having to dismantle large sections of the machine. It’s our aim to give businesses the ability to sustainably internalize and optimize their operations using our reliable hardware.