Screen neatly summed up the two aspects of the continuous feed print market by using the recent Hunkeler Innovation Days to show both the Truepress Jet 560 HDX that was launched at Drupa, and the latest version of the venerable 520NX, the AD, that was making its European debut, and which targets the transactional market.
Continuous feed digital presses, first using dry toner and now inkjet, were traditionally used for transactional printing, mainly for billing information which has to be personalised for each customer but doesn’t require much in the way of print quality. When continuous feed inkjet machines started to appear the press vendors picked up on the emerging transpromo market to take advantage of their improved image quality and justify their higher cost. Over the last ten years we have seen improvements to ink formulations to enable the use of standard offset paper stocks and this has allowed presses such as the the 560 HDX to move into higher value markets like direct mail and book publishing – plenty of which was on show at the recent Hunkeler event.
But where does that leave the transactional print market? Bui Burke, senior vice president of sales at Screen Europe, says that the transactional print market is shrinking as many users switch to online billing but points out that these printers are also suitable for other applications such as voting slips and fines. He adds, “Even if there is only 20% of the market there was, it’s still significant. And some of these machines are quite old now so there’s a market in replacing them.” He notes that other vendors, such as Kodak and Xerox, have exited the transactional and transpromo arena, making it easier for Screen.
So it makes sense for Screen to update the NX platform that was first shown at Drupa 2016 and commercially released later that year. Martijn van den Broek, Benelux regional sales manager for Screen Europe, says it’s designed to run inkjet treated and uncoated stocks rather than the standard offset that the HDX uses. He says that Screen will target the direct mail and publishing markets and adds that one target market is schoolbooks and exam papers, which those papers are more suitable for because they allow school children to write on them, which is harder with coated offset papers.
The new 520NX AD still uses the same Epson PrecisionCore printheads which deliver 600 dpi resolution. It’s capable of 80mpm at 600 x 900 dpi or 180mpm at 600 x 600dpi in monochrome and 600 x 400 dpi in colour. Screen has also introduced a new 300 x 600 dpi print mode that allows the press to run at 225mpm. Judging from the samples shown at the Hunkeler event, many customers will be quite happy with the print quality at this speed, which is good enough for some promotional material.
In addition, the black printbar has been separated out, enabling the CMY bars to be parked and capped to make it easier to use the press for monochrome print jobs. There’s also room for additional heads for things like MICR inks, though Burke says that MICR is very rarely requested nowadays outside of the French market. Equally, this space could be used for security inks such as UV visible watermarks.
This new AD version uses Screen’s Truepress Ink NP, a high-density pigment ink, which Screen has described as a new inkset but which I first covered back in 2022 at the IGAS show in Japan. This is a water-based pigment ink that doesn’t require any primer or inkjet coating for the media. It offers higher density for the black ink with better contrast which will help Screen take this press beyond the transactional market.
The main change to the AD version over the previous NX iteration is that Screen has now added the JetInspection module that it developed for the 560 HDX as standard. This is a a built-in inspection system enables real-time scanning of the entire surface of all pages in a job to check for defects in the printing or any paper damage. Van den Broek explains, “Every record is given its own barcode and that can be recorded. So if there is a defect then the finishing line can pick it up.” Naturally, the system also compares the printed pages against the PDFs to ensure that all of the right pages are printed and that they match the PDFs. He adds, “You can store a thumbnail of any image or save it to an Excel spreadsheet and use that as evidence for customers.”
The same model can also be used to make paper profiles and to set the press up for different media stocks. Van den Broek notes, “The camera makes it much faster to set up and to adjust paper settings for quality control and also for aligning everything, so it reduces the downtime.” He points out that there may be small variations between different batches of the same paper but that the system can adjust around this to ensure uniform output. He adds, “It has AI that operators can control through the settings because certain papers have minor defects but you don’t want it to flag up everything.”
The press comes with an automatic nozzle cleaning function that should reduce some maintenance and downtime. The JetInspection system also includes an optional Intelligent Nozzle Correction feature, or INC, which can detect missing nozzles in the print heads and can map around the nozzles to prevent blank lines and other artefacts appearing on the print.
Otherwise, the basic specifications remain the same. The 520NX AD is a 4-color press with two engines for double-sided printing. It takes papers from 40 to 250gsm, and from 165 to 520mm wide. It comes with Screen’s Equios RIP, which is based on the Adobe PDF Print Engine. You can find further details from screeneurope.com.
First published on the Printing and Manufacturing Journal on 7 March 2025. Republished with permission.
