Xeikon VS Indigo

MaWiE

Member
Hi all,

I would like to know the good and bad things about these 2 digital presses: HP Indigo and Xeikon.
It is mainly for label printing, small and big run.

I have already been in touch with the HP Indigo ws4500, and it was a blast working with it. Very little problems but the click charges and the white not being as opaque as I want it are the main reason I am interested in Xeikon, but know almost nothing about that press.

These are our main focus :
- opaque white
- if different sizes of substrate can be inserted without too much re-registration
- time spent for daily maintenance
- amount of consumable
- constancy of colors

Can someone tell me the pros and cons of those 2 presses?

Thank you for your answers!
 
I don't know any of these machines in particular but HP Indigo can be configured to up to 7 colors I believe. I wonder if you can have CMYK + 2 whites and hit 2 coats of white... plus custom ink's color can be used in it. The cons: if uncoated product needs to be produced - Indigo's print technology is known to be not a rub resistant plus some special substrates might be required leading to higher production costs - from what I read - it is always "approved stock has got to be used" diamond coated or something in that nature.
The Xeikon is toner based device and it is most likely less picky about regular substrates but some (poly / clear's /synthetic stocks) may pose as problem because of the Fusing unit's heat. You will be locked in CMYK + white as being copier engineer I had never heard of any toner color other than CMYK+clear+white as mentioned before.
What you have to give to liquid ink technologies VS Toner is that molecule of ink will always be smaller that particle of toner because you can only mill it by so much....
I guess folks with hands-on experience on these machines can put more light on this subject...
 
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A couple of diferences:

Xeikon is full rotative printer, Indigo is semi rotative.
Xeikon is double sided printing One-pass
The paper for indigo needs to be pre-treated before print, is not necessary for the xeikon..
Xeikon has 5 print stations : CMYK plus, you can choose between spot color, security toner, opaque white.
Xeikon speed :19 m/min
 
About paper sizes:
This is a rotary press, so it works with web, is not that you can change every five minutes the paper size, this machine is made to keep it running.
You can work with diferent paper sizes , but you have to make some procedures when you do it, I think is going to take you about to 10 minutes to configure the system to put another size.
 
The Xeikon does have a few advantages. The print speed is 63 feet per minute in full coverage mode with an image width of 12.7 inches. This is an improvement over the Indigo. Also, the Xeikon can print on most substrates - paper, plastics, films (supported and unsupported), metals, and foils.
 
For what you’re wanting to do I’d probably go with the Xeikon. Plus like Mtorry mentioned, you can print on things like plastic. Plastic business cards are an awesome way to stick out from the crowd.
 
Greetings,

I don't know much about Xeikon, but I am well versed on HP Indigo. The adhesion and special coated papers comments are sort of old news. There are so many substrates approved that it isn't much of an issue anymore, and Indigo inks are much improved. RE: the white ink, I've run this before and the way to get more opacity is to double bump it. It's easily done in the job properties. I used to hit white on window clings 3 times. Running specialty jobs can be a royal pain, so be sure to test whatever machines you have in mind more than once...and talk to the operator when the salesman isn't looking.
 
I am also are interested in pro and cons of both, I understand the Indigo can run CMYK + Orange, Green and Violet giving it a wider colour gamut for matching Pantone's. Anybody had experience with this, does the Orange, Green and Violet make substantial deference over standard CMYK ?, presumably some intelligence to the colour separation has to be applied ?

Are there any other contenders apart from the Indigo or Xeikon ?
 
We used to run a 6 color Indigo with orange and violet. HP claims that this combination will hit 97% of the pantone range - which we found to have substance. However, in practical terms the level of colour variation we experienced throughout a run made this claim is a bit tenuous.
Nevertheless, a 6-7 colour machine will allow you to run specific spot colours which will negate a lot of the variation when running spots. So if you are regularly running a specific panton then this may be a more viable option.
For us, in the end we switched out the two spot colour units and ended up running the press permanently in 4 colour mode.
 
We used to run a 6 color Indigo with orange and violet. HP claims that this combination will hit 97% of the pantone range - which we found to have substance. However, in practical terms the level of colour variation we experienced throughout a run made this claim is a bit tenuous.
Nevertheless, a 6-7 colour machine will allow you to run specific spot colours which will negate a lot of the variation when running spots. So if you are regularly running a specific panton then this may be a more viable option.
For us, in the end we switched out the two spot colour units and ended up running the press permanently in 4 colour mode.

Thanks for the info, we have a wide variety of Pantone colours where the customer would want to be as close to the solid spot as possible. I have seen the HP indichrome swatch book that shows the default colour splits for CMYK and CMYKOGV. The CMYKOGV splits would probably be acceptable in most cases but colour variation through the run would be a concern.
 

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