The Canon iR-ADV C9000 Pro has received a thorough review from industry experts printweek.com

We’ve all been impressed by the Canon imageRunner Advance C9000 Pro series of light product printing press since their release last year, but when praise comes from industry authority ‘PrintWeek Magazine’ special mention would seem to be in order. In a recent edition, PrintWeek lauded the C9000 Pro’s excellent ‘combination of functionality, flexibility, productivity and image quality,’ and gave one of the most exhaustive reviews of the machine yet. Here, we provide you with a summary of PrintWeek’s findings and some of our own thoughts on what is undoubtedly the leading light production digital printing on the UK market at the moment.

Canon’s ‘Colour Laser Copier’ (CLC) was for years a real work-horse of the digital printing industry, fending off rivals in its category well into the new millennium. However, growing competition and demands for more features and greater productivity, have sadly led to the demise of the CLC in recent years. With its strategic aim of being number one in the markets it serves, Canon has fought back with the ImagePress professional printing machines in the colour production sector. And now, in light production, comes the ImageRunner Advance Pro.

There are two ImageRunner Advance C9000 Pro models, the C9060 Pro and the C9070 Pro, providing 60 and 70 colour pages per minute respectively.

One of the most-talked about features on the new range is its onboard profit centre. Nikki Richardson, Canon Solution Marketing Manager commented

There’s definitely an opportunity for printrooms to become profit centres with one, and it would reduce costs massively.

With the new digital printing press, companies can print internal marketing materials they may have outsourced previously. Richardson commented that this option is particularly appealing when combined with personalisation and the C9060/70 Pro’s ability to produce print on demand – ensuring that every document produced is relevant and needed. Compared with the CLC, the Image Runner Advance also comes with a wider media range and extended inline finishing options. The C9000 takes stocks up to SRA3 paper size, and in custom sizes a little bit bigger, and can handle a maximum weight of 300gsm. It can also cope with coated stocks as well as uncoated, helping to ensure its output looks as professional as possible.

The C9000's intended average monthly print volume is 35,000 A4 pages, which is historically much higher than is typical of light production printing machines. However, maximum monthly volume on the 70ppm 9070 could be up to 350,000 A4 sheets. For comparison, an ImagePress tops out at 500,000-550,000 sheets. Inline finishing options include an inserter, hole punch, bookletmaker with leading-edge trimmer, and a new folder, which can produce five folds including standard Z and C folds as well as a new double-parallel fold to offer greater flexibility in-house.

For colour printing, The ImageRunner uses some technologies borrowed from the ImagePress but also brings its own capabilitues to the table. New toner has been designed to lower the energy needed in fusing, which is one reason why energy consumption on the Image Runner Advance is 40% lower than with the CLC. The toner is waxed based which eliminates the need for fuser oil. The colour print range is slightly narrower than on the ImagePress but to keep output consistent, Canon has developed a system, Automatic and Reciprocal Colour Density Adjustment Technology, which monitors and automatically adjust the density of each colour.

Driving the C9060/70 models is EFI Fiery GX300, which is available either as an external RIP or an embedded controller. Both come with the latest Fiery Command Workstation 5 for an easier-to-use interface. Two software packages are available, Uniflow and Helix. Uniflow provides print job tracking, auditing and analysis. Helix provides job-ticketing and can be configured to route jobs to the most appropriate machine.

Canon has also worked with document software firms, including Microsoft and Adobe, to provide extended functionality for customers using their applications. One example is a plug-in to Adobe Reader that Canon has developed that enables annotation and comments to be added, which would otherwise need a full copy of Acrobat.

The final string to the machine's workflow bow is the MEAP-plus architecture. This is a development platform that allows Canon and third parties to integrate new tools and services into the workflow.

While it might seem a throwback to the days of copiers over printers, the C9000 is available with a scanner for document input. Particularly for in-plants serving local government and any other organisation still heavily reliant on paper-trails, there are plenty of applications that call for the ability to scan in hundreds of pages. Canon's response is the Duplex Automated Document Feeder (DADF) a 200 A4-page-per-minute automated one-pass double-sided scanner that has a feeding capacity of 300 sheets.

As PrintWeek have said the ImageRunner Advance machines

May have turned up a little late at the light production party but they haven’t come emty handed.

The Canon C9000 Pro digital printing press went on sale last year and is available at leading professional print suppliers UK wide and online. For a chance to win an ImageRunner Advance C9070 Pro, please see the recent Canon Copiers ‘Business Leap’ press release.