On land that was once served as Tilles Pumpkin Farm in Melville, New York, Canon invited the industry press to gather in August to explore its new Americas headquarters. Although the facility’s public grand opening had taken place in July with the like of Sen. Charles Schumer and other state and local officials in attendance, this was an opportunity for The Big Picture and others to tour the 700,000-square-foot facility and get a “first draft” on some new products that Canon is releasing.
The new Canon Americas building, which joins London and Tokyo as one of three Canon worldwide headquarters locations, sits on 52 acres and houses 1400 employees (plus 300 consultants). The site features a walking trail and two large ponds, and 8 acres that will remain untouched woodlands. The facility itself is designed to meet LEED gold certification, and features several environmentally conscious elements, including daylight harvesting (systems using daylight to offset the amount of electric lighting needed to light a space) and 10 electric-vehicle charging stations.
Also of note is the onsite Canon Corporate Showroom, a 12,000-square-foot space that will be used for product demonstrations for customers, dealers, media, and students. The showroom offers touch-and-try product displays for every Canon product category – including wide-format printing, of course – as well as an interactive company timeline, a 40-seat theater, and much more.
On the product side of things, Canon provided complete information on one newly introduced printer, and also previewed a few other products it placed under non-disclosure agreements (NDA). It officially launched into North America the Océ ColorWave 900 printer, which had been shown at FESPA (and, going further back, had been shown as the Project Velocity at Drupa 2012).
Engineered for the graphic arts as well as the AEC and GIS (geographic information systems) markets, the Océ ColorWave 900 is designed to “close the gap between digital inkjet and traditional offset technology,” Canon reports.
The ColorWave 900 printer has a raw print speed of more than 12,000-square-feet per hour; delivering 3.4 billion 1.2-picoliter drops of aqueous ink per second, the machine is able to produce resolutions of 1600 x 1600 dpi, Canon reports.
With a maximum media width of 42 inches, the machine has a 6-media-roll capacity (up to 650 feet per roll); output is cut and delivered into a high-capacity stacker, which features dual delivery trays for concurrent printing and unloading.
Features include: Océ PowerM controller or Onyx Thrive print-workflow software; a touchscreen interface; and more. Applications include point-of-sale (P-O-S) graphics; exhibition and tradeshow materials; counter and floor displays; technical drawings and maps; and more.
“We see the Océ ColorWave 900 printer as a disruptive technology because of its ability to provide a cost-effective and efficient alternative for producing short-run jobs,” says Junichi Yoshitake, senior VP, Business Imaging Solutions Group, Canon USA. “Using this technology, shorter print runs can now be more economical by eliminating plate making and make-ready, while still maintaining the high image quality that our customers expect.”
The ColorWave 900 will debut at Print13. Three other new Canon products – two in the wide-format space and one in the narrow-format space – will also make their debut at Print13; since these are under NDA, however, we cannot report on them until our post-show coverage (but if you’re attending Print13, we urge you to check them out on the event’s show floor).