OREANDA-NEWS. Ricoh has developed a new printer controller "TotalFlow Print Server" for the recently announced RICOH™ Pro C7100 and RICOH Pro C9100 series of cut sheet color presses. This new controller will be launched globally with local availability determined country by country. This controller is designed to be highly compatible with prepress workflow software for offset printing by enabling the same user interface to be used for offset and digital workflows. Ricoh will begin by engaging with clients who currently use offset printers with a requirement to add digital printing to their workflow.

In today's commercial print market, there is a need for on demand printing for the fast turnaround of short run jobs and the printing of jobs with high added value, such as personalized or variable data printing. This new print server is compatible with Prinect™, developed by Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG™ (Germany), and Prinergy™, developed by Eastman Kodak Company™ (United States), both global prepress workflow solutions. In partnership with these two companies, Ricoh has jointly developed the TotalFlow Print Server which utilizes JDF*1 and JMF*2, the industry standards for setting, communicating and reporting print job instructions.

With this new print server Ricoh can build a hybrid printing workflow for customers to help them deliver work to both offset presses and Ricoh's highly productive and high quality RICOH Pro C series of digital presses. This enables improved operational efficiency and flexibility by providing a choice of output devices based on client or operator requests, as well as the fast turnaround of jobs on the digital presses.

Ricoh will also work with Heidelberg and Kodak on marketing, product development, production, sales and customer support to provide higher added value solutions to the commercial printing market.

As one of the pillars of its business strategy, Ricoh considers the enhancement of the commercial printing market an area of growth and will continue to invest in products and services to help print service providers boost their competitiveness in the printing industry and grow their business.

*1: JDF is the abbreviation of Job Definition Format. It is a common format for transmitting printing job instructions for the software and devices of various manufacturers.
*2: JMF is the abbreviation of Job Messaging Format. It is a format that facilitates communication among systems about the progress of operations and information on changes in job specifications using the workflow coordinated by the JDF.