Proprint Services, a Toronto-based full-service point of sale production company, has recently upgraded its wide-format digital print capacity, installing an Inca Onset S40 digital inkjet printer. Supplied by distributor Fujifilm Canada Graphic Systems, the new printer gives Proprint a completely streamlined digital printing system.
Proprint’s integrated team of seasoned professionals–experts in print, finishing, marketing and consumer packaging–bring a full suite of services to its clients, including prepress, color proofing, color retouching, graphic design, structural design, POP prototype development, litho and digital printing, kitting /fulfilment, and distribution. Known for its production of entire national campaigns, with all the trimmings–floor, end cap and counter displays, mobiles, cling vinyl, tent cards, banners, among many others–Proprint’s working motto is “If you can imagine it, we can print it.”
Installed less than six months ago, the Onset S40, Inca’s latest wide-format printer, has already proven it was the right choice. The Onset S40 dealt with “size and substrate limitations,” says Richard Krakower, President, Proprint Services. “Our other flatbeds couldn’t print corrugated well. Now printing on corrugated looks just as good, if not better, than printing on 100lb gloss paper,” says Krakower.
Ramped up speeds
Until the Inca Onset S40 digital printer, larger POP jobs had to be run on a litho press, or silkscreened. “Before, it would take us 12 minutes to run a 4×8 foot sheet on our other flatbeds. With the Onset S40 it takes just 50 seconds to run a 5×10-foot sheet,” explains Krakower. “So if we had 40 sheets to print–you can just do the math. When we had a 200-sheet job, it would take forever to complete, instead of just one shift. Trying to get the work out was a balancing act, requiring jobs to be moved around from litho to digital. With the Inca Onset S40, we are producing jobs 50% faster, at a minimum.”
The difference running the Onset S40, which outputs at a speed of up to 470 sqm/hour, or 94 full beds, hit home recently, when Proprint produced jobs for a retail customer with stores in a variety of locations. The job used styrene and PETG plastic substrates, with output on sheet sizes of 48″x96″ in counts that ranged between 400 and 800. “It is amazing, now. Before, we would have to run the job in pieces — print a certain percentage of the sheets, cut them, and send them to a few stores — and then print some more and send them to the next stores, and so on,” recalls Krakower. The Inca Onset S40 is so fast we can run the entire job and complete it all at once. It is incredibly fast–we’ve increased our efficiency ten-fold,”
The Inca Onset S40 produces superb POP-quality display graphics economically onto substrates up to 50mm thick. In addition to the standard CMYK configuration, the S40 offers an optional 6-color configuration of CMYK plus lc and lm, allowing Proprint to match nearly every PMS color. “With the Inca Onset S40, the limitations of a digital press are pretty much gone,” says Krakower. “People in the industry who have seen the Inca Onset S40 print corrugated are stunned and impressed. Finished printed artwork–whether it’s solid one color, or four color with light magenta and cyan, is exceptional. It’s just amazing what this machine can run. Good luck finding someone who says the quality isn’t good enough.”
Saving time, making money
Proprint’s Inca Onset S40 is fitted with an automation system, which lets the company operate in manual, semi or three-quarter automation from the same configuration. “It’s fantastic,” says Krakower. “We produce a lot of jobs with sheet runs between 20-500–the time we are saving is priceless. There are no longer one or two bodies standing around, waiting. The production speed is incredible. Time is money.”
To complete the ‘system’, Proprint also invested in the first Esko Kongsberg XP Auto in Canada, a fully automatic finishing table with a 63″ x 126″ bed, from Fujifilm Canada. “We have plenty of die-cutting equipment, but the Kongsberg table helps with smaller, 100-200 display jobs,” explains Krakower. “We stack printed materials and the machine cuts, perfs, scores, and stacks finished pieces on a skid — overseen by just one person, just like the Inca Onset S40.”
Krakower was impressed with the service, too. To get the unit up and going, Inca sent two of its top people from Europe. “They were super,” says Krakower. “They cared more about the installation than we did. They were efficient, had great attention to detail and great concern that everything was just right. They were proactive and at the same time reactive whenever an issue arose. There was never a point in time when I wondered why I bought it.”
Fujifilm Canada also went above and beyond, establishing and then ensuring Proprint was able to match its customers’ corporate colors. “They were unbelievably helpful on the system end, setting up the ColorGate RIP with our PMS colors–they are second to none,” says Krakower. They also calibrated the Onset S40 with GRACol 7 for digital proofing, so the digital proofs are accurate, achievable, and repeatable.
With the installation of the Inca Onset S40, Krakower believes “the sky’s the limit. If you can think it, you can do it. What amazes me the most is how we survived without the Inca Onset S40. We didn’t realize what we weren’t doing before. All I can say is, if you’re looking for the best possible ink on any substrate in a digital environment, nothing comes close to the quality and speed of the Inca Onset S40, topped off with the support from Inca and Fuji.”
