Tuesday, October 03, 2006

We are extremely excited to introduce the new Konica Minolta bizhub PRO C6500 Digital Color Production Printing System.  Following in the footsteps of both the groundbreaking bizhub PRO C500 and the bizhub PRO 1050, the C6500 is poised to disrupt the industry's price/performance curve once again.  At an impressive 65 ppm in both black and color, the C6500 becomes Konica Minolta's flagship production-level color model.

The bizhub PRO C6500 is the ideal solution to satisfy the demands of the short-run production color printing market.  The primary target market for this model is in "manned" environments such as corporate Central Reprographics Departments (CRDs) and Print-for-Pay/Quick Printers.  The bizhub PRO C6500 is also a good fit for short run on-demand jobs in the Commercial Print market as well as transactional printing in Corporate Data Centers.  With consistency superior image quality, a robust monthly duty cycle of 300,000 impressions, print speeds of up to 65ppm, 7,500-sheet maximum paper capacity, unattended output capacity of up to 8,400-sheets, the ability to handle up to 300 gsm paper, and offering a wide variety of inline finishing capabilities, the new bizhub PRO C6500 not only meets, but exceeds the needs of most light to mid-production environments.

Improvements in image quality have been realized through major engineering enhancements.  The bizhub PRO C6500 is the first Konica Minolta model to feature our new Simitri HD Color Polymerized Toner technology.  Smaller, smoother toner particles provide incredibly accurate color image quality.  In additional to new toner, the C6500 also features a new drum and drum drive design, new developing unit, new transfer unit, new fusing unit, and an improved vertical writing unit for more accurate color registration.  The result of all these new technological advances is the best, most consistent color image quality Konica Minolta has ever offered.

One of the strongest design aspects of the new bizhub PRO 1050 is its ability to reliably handle heavy, coated paper stocks.  Several new technologies make this possible.  Simitri HD not only produces better image quality than ever before, it also fuses at a lower temperature, allowing a wider variety of substrates to reliably flow through the C6500's fusing section.  Another new feature is the optional heater/dehumidifier unit available for installation in the paper feed units.  A combination of humidity sensors, heaters and fans automatically adjusts the humidity level in the PFU to pre-condition challenging, coated stocks so that they feed and image more reliably.  Yet another exciting new innovation is found in the RU-503/504 Relay/Buffer Pass Units.  Once the image is fused, the paper passes through the Relay Unit before entering the finishers.  The Relay Unit contains a battery of cooling fans to ensure that the recently fused paper/toner cool down before hitting the pick-up rollers in the finishers.  The paper de-curls and the fuser stabalizes.  This not only ensures that the paper will pass reliably into the finishers, but the fact that the toner is cooled and stabilized virtually eliminates any potential image streaking from the feed rollers in the finishers.

In addition to high-speed color throughout on a wide variety of substrates, The C6500 offers flexible, production-grade finishing options similar to those offered on the bizhub PRO 1050.  Finishing options include: 100-sheet stapling with staple cut feature, 6 types of folding, 2/3 hole punch, post-process insertion (covers and inserts), saddle-stitch booklet making with automatic face trimming (up to 50-sheets/200-pages), and flat-sheet stacking of up to 5,000 sheets with a roll-away cart for easy transport to near-line finishing or packaging/distribution.

An integral part of the bizhub PRO 6500 Digital Production Printing solution is the optional IC-303 external Fiery image controller.  The powerful IC-303 allows C6500 users to unleash the power of the C6500's throughout and finishing capabilities-right from the desktop.  New Fiery System 8, featuring new-look drivers, is the most powerful and user-friendly Fiery system software ever.  The IC-303 also enables the C6500 to act as a network scanner.  Users can Scan-to-Email, Scan-to-FTP, Scan-to-SMB, or Scan-to-HDD in the IC-303.  The IC-303 also comes with an impressive array of EFI job, device and color management utilities including:  Command WorkStation, new-look Fiery Web Tools and Color Wise color management tools.  Optional Fiery software tools include Color Profiler (includes ES-1000 Spectrophotometer), Impose v2.6, Graphics Arts Package-Premium Edition, and Production Print Package.