In December 2013, Canon India installed its first DreamLabo at GK Vale in Bengaluru making India the first country in South Asia with an install. According to Puneet Datta director of the Professional Printing Products division in Canon India this shows that India has an affinity for the latest in technology and the southern part of India has always been the early adopter. Datta emphasizes that the DreamLabo technology and print quality should not be confused or compared with other laser or liquid
toner prints available in the market. He says, “The DreamLabo is the only press which can do proper justice and render high-definition quality photos. It is in a league of its own. In the coming days, this is going to be the technology that every photo-printer in India would like to adopt to stay ahead of its competition.”
With the DreamLabo 5000, Canon has adopted the best of both worlds incorporating duplex printing and quality which is similar if not better than traditional silver halide technology. Since it is a inkjet press, the ink and substrate merge seamlessly eliminating the need for lamination. The DreamLabo 5000 uses a 7-color dye-based ink system with double tanks for ink cartridge replacement during printing, avoiding work stoppage. It uses the basic CMYK along with a photo cyan, photo magenta and gray and offers a print resolution of 2400 dpi.
FINE technology
The Canon DreamLabo 5000 prints on media up to 12-inches wide. It can produce 40 photographic 4×6-inch
prints in a minute with one-pass printing or print a 20-page A4 photo album in 72 seconds with automatic duplexing. The wide print head delivers high-speed one-pass printing, requiring only a single pass of the printing paper while the print head remains in a fixed position. When used in combination with the automatic double-sided printing function, the DreamLabo 5000 can print 1000 A4 size prints and hour or 2,300 prints of 4×6-inch an hour.
The DreamLabo 5000 employs a double paper magazine system that automatically supplies paper from a separate magazine when a paper roll runs out. It features a newly developed high-density print head, enabling over 300 mm-wide printing output.
Incorporating Canon’s FINE (Full- photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering) technology, the print head enables printing of high-quality photos and detailed text to support a variety of outputs, from photo albums, photo books, photo calendars, photo collages and other merchandise to high-quality POD items, such as
bespoke brochures.