The Diamond 3000 series, due to begin shipping in 2002, will be manufactured alongside Mitsubishis existing F and G series presses (medium- and high-level specification respectively) and marketed as a super-high-tech production machine. With a running speed of 16,000sph, a four-colour Diamond 3040 takes just ten minutes to complete a full colour change including wash-ups, plate change, and the run up to usable copies said to take just six sheets from start-up due to a scanning spectrophotometer mounted on the final delivery.
Where Mitsubishis G series presses are designed to be set up using electronic data, there is still a level of operator involvement required, to feed that data into the press, said Jenkinson. The Diamond 3000 series presses will take that data from pre-press automatically, via CIP3 or other online connections, so that even relatively unskilled operators can get good results from a multicolour press.
The price range of the Diamond 3000 series presses is anticipated to be around 20% greater than the price of a Mitsubishi G series machine.
Story by Karen Charlesworth
