Is the Indigo the only digital press that uses liquid ink?

Wouldn't that be better and closer to offset quality and consistancy?

To my knowledge the Indigo is the only digital press using liquid inks.

HP would definately like you to believe they are better and closer to offset. I don't know that is true. I think in some cases that may be the case; however, the inks and changing inks adds an additional element of maintenance and cleanup between jobs.

CMYK process with toner like the Igen or Nexpress use offer rather high quality and offer a cleaner lower / different maintenance scenario.

Based on the amount of negative feedback I have heard about the Indigo and about the high cost of ownership, I would be very hesitant of choosing it based on the possible, but limited advantages of the inks.

Indigo has been the defacto standard for short run digital printing but recently the toner based iGen3 and nexpress have made significant strides in improving the quality of toner based digital printing and arguably put it past Indigo.

However, HP is continuing to advance the Indigo line and has made significant strides to improve the ink permanence and the amount of maintanence required. They are the only digital printing technology to offer up to 7 spot color printing and can match PMS colors using the additional ink wells.

We are in the process of evaluating Indigo options in our expansion plans. I have a lot of questions about Indigo and hope to get them answered here in the near future.

Would love to hear from existing Indigo owners or operators on how they view the Indigo compared to other digital devices.

Hi there,

The Indigo range is currently the only machine running a liquid ink system. This has the benefit of being able to more accuratly match Litho than any of the currently batch of toner based machines, including iGEN3.

Having worked on Xeikon 32/D, Indigo Turbostream and 3000/3050 products and more recently iGEN3 I am of the opinion that the HP3000 engine gives the best quality output, but not by much. iGEN3 has seriously brought Xerox back into the Digital Print market with impressive solid colours and bright vibrant images. I have only recently moved to the iGEN and we have had serious reliabilty issues with it which have hampered my experience with the machine.

If it was my money and I could only buy one press is would be the 3050 or 5000 (4000 if your wanting roll-to-roll), the quality of the prints and the option of using Indigochrome or customer specific spot colours in upto 7 station (6 in my opinion, 7th station is to unreliable due to the BID angle and the forces of gravity ).

As for ink changes on the Indigo its not to much of a problem. You can change most colours in under 15mins, 30 if you are going from a dark colour like reflex to a light one like yellow. Maintainance wise the machine is a little on the dirty side but if the Ops keep it clean and well oiled it won't cause any problems, also due to the fact it uses drums for image transfer and impression there are a lot more operator fixs and adjustments that can be done compaired to the iGEN which being almost completely electronic and requires specific engineer software to access a lot of the diagnostic DC routines.

If I could buy both then I would (I say both 'cos nxtpress is utter garbage). The Indigo and the iGEN would be an excellent duo, selling high coverage full colour work on the iGEN and playing to its strengths and running the jobs that aren't viable for litho or require more accurate colour matching on the Indigo.


Enough waffle,
Hope some of it makes sense.

ps. iGEN has a very clever spot colour handling system also (though the gamaet is limited) it will handle any colours on the page that are specified as spot colour indepenantly of the rest of the CMYK images. This means you can tweek the spot or the image and not bugger up the others colour ot tone. (we have a DocuSP rip so I aren't sure if this feature is available on the Creo Rip)

Just to add clarification... HP is the only device that can not map spot colors to the CMYK gamut with the ability to tweak the reciepe. Kodak Nexpress can do this along with the iGen3. Also the Nexpress can use its 5th color to extend the gamut in one red, green or blue direction in combination with CYMK to get colors that the iGen3 can not.

I do feel that the Indigo does produce the best overall quality, but because it doesn't stick to the sheet completely no matter what HP says... (Unless you UV coat it) it will offset when friction is applied. Take a piece printed on an indigo and rub it up against a white sheet, tell me it doesn't offset.

Also, I'd be curious about the Indigo performance on longer runs. How much maintenence is needed to maintain quality over say, 100,000 pieces? How long would it actually take to do that many sheets, 2 sided, 4 color? Not rated speed, but actual time...

let's keep in mind: the form the ink is in may be liquid, but it's not ink like on a press. It's not a hydrophilic/oleophilic process. It's actually plastic toner, albeit suspended in a liquid.

Ask HP: "how does the ink know where to go and where not to go?" The answer is the same as with any other laser engine, and has nothing to do with the lithographic process.

May i know how much is the cost of maintaining one HP Indigi digital press and how lng before the inks run out?