Have you considered adding a wide format printer to your shop’s sign arsenal but been waiting for the right time to pull the trigger?
Now might be the best time to take action.
Printer manufacturers are loading even smaller and less-expensive machines with bells and whistles that help simplify and “profit-ize” the wide format printing process.
And industry consultants continue to stress that opportunities in wide-format are available—if a shop wants to reach out and grab them.
Boston-based consultancy house I.T. Strategies, for instance, projects that wide format output will show a compound annual growth rate of more than 6.5 percent by 2019 (square meters printed), with eco-solvent and latex printing growing at a rate of more than 10 percent in that timespan.
The company states in the 2015 edition of its annual Wide Format Graphics Forecast, “Wide format graphics printing…is a market largely driven by the consumer economy, and that has been growing again, and it is always renewing its advertising needs. It is still profitable, it still grows, and it is still driven by constant technology improvement.”
What follows are five trends to consider as you begin your quest to add digital wide format printing and its opportunities to your business.
1. More versatile printers grow with your business.
In the past, print shops would buy an entry-level printer and, once they outgrew that (or had a need for another application), would then have to buy a new machine with additional features.
Having added more customers, jobs, and different applications, the shop would then buy yet another machine with even more features. It wasn’t unusual to see that very first machine end up being used as a doorstop somewhere in the back corner of the shop’s production facility.
Today printer OEMs are striving to make their machines more versatile and capable of growing as your business and customer base/application base expands.
A prime example of this is the Inca Onset R40LT UV flatbed from Inca Digital Printers. Shops can acquire the “base” machine as a four-color, 63-by-127-inch manual printer that can output at 265 square meters/hour. But because the machine is based on Inca’s Onset Scaleable Architecture platform, users can then upgrade the machine at their facility—to, for instance, an automatic eight-color machine with a speed of 400 square meters/hour. The result: increased capabilities and productivity without having to bring more iron in-house.
Or what if you have invested in a flatbed because all your jobs have been on rigid substrates, but then you begin to get requests for work best handled on a roll-fed machine?
Screen USA’s solution is to enable its Truepress Jet W3200UV HS flatbed to be outfitted with a new roll-to-roll system (126 inches wide) that can be added in the field or at the factory. In addition, the standard Truepress Jet W3200UV flatbed with an output speed of 915 square feet/hour can be upgraded to the high-speed (HS) model—1,615 square feet/hour—in the field.
2. Output gains in predictability, ease of use.
Printer manufacturers, as well as RIP companies, are continuing their quest to make output more predictable and generally easier to produce. No, it’s not yet true “green-button technology,” but many users would say it is getting close.
Epson, for instance, recently introduced its SureColor P-Series lineup of printers, which includes a Commercial Edition featuring a new Violet ink for an expanded color gamut and delivering “output matching 99 percent of the Pantone Formula Guide Solid Coated,” Epson reports.
The new P-Series printers (available in twenty-four- and forty-four-inch versions) can also be had with an optional Epson SpectroProofer UVS inline spectrophotometer for automated color management and verification (and, so, can be used for a variety of proofing applications).
On the easier-to-produce side of things, consider how Onyx Graphics has beefed up its ProductionHouse, PosterShop, and RIPCenter software in its latest versions. ONYX 12 features live, color-managed previews that display job edits as they happen—users can see just where spot colors, grommets, marks, tiling, crops, and cut paths are placed before processing (saving time and reducing “guesswork waste”).
Plus new finishing tools enable automatic grommet and mark placement for prints that are essentially “finishing ready.”
3. UV LED points the way.
UV LED continues to make inroads with printer OEMs and shops.
UV LEDs have longer-lasting lamps and tend to consume less energy than do standard UV lamps, plus the lamps remain relatively cool during operation. The result, reports manufacturers, is a higher curing efficiency, safer and more stable output, increased yield, and reduced operating costs.
EFI is a major proponent of the technology and has multiple UV LED models available. Its eighty-inch EFI Vutek GS2000LX Pro with UltraDrop Technology is a production-level hybrid (rigid/roll-fed) featuring eight colors plus white ink, continuous print productivity, single-pass multilayer printing, and optional Material Edge Guides for working with corrugated materials. Its UltraDrop Technology is designed to offer smaller drop sizes and more precise control.
Fujifilm’s upcoming Acuity LED 1600 II printer, is another example: The machine features a fast-printing mode of up to 355 square feet/hour; multi-layer printing with white and clear ink; an automatic jetting calibration function; two new vacuum modes for different media (for thin/low-resilience media); and the ability to disable the white and clear-ink heads when not in use for reduced maintenance costs.
The JFX200 UV-LED flatbed printer from Mimaki offers another take on UV LED: With a four-by-eight-foot landscape-oriented format, it can accommodate media up to two inches thick. Other features include: variable-drop printing; printing speeds up to 269 square feet/hour; layout pins to help ensure proper media alignment; and the availability of white ink, clear ink, and primer (to help the ink adhere to glass).
4. Digital fabric weaves growth.
Printing on fabrics for soft signage offers a variety of advantages—from the naturally soft feel and texture to its distinct aesthetic, plus the economic savings when it comes to shipping expenses (for the client as well as the graphics producer).
And digitally printing on fabrics is growing: InfoTrends, the Weymouth, Massachusetts-based consulting group, reports that the worldwide digital textile printing market for garment, home décor, and industrial applications will experience around 34 percent compound annual growth to 2019.
Want more proof? Just take a look at how some event organizers are jumping onto the digital textile print bandwagon.
Messe Frankfurt—the mega tradeshow organizer—announced the launch of Avanprint, a 2016 event that will serve as a showcase for digital textile printing technologies. Held parallel with the Texworld and Apparel Sourcing shows in Paris, the Avanprint event will showcase textiles plus relevant machines, inks, and more.
Roland DGA’s Texart RT-640 is an option for digital textile printing: A sixty-four-inch dye-sub transfer printer, it is available in a standard four-color configuration (CMYK) but also can be had in an eight-color setup (CMYKcm + Orange and Violet). The Orange and Violet are designed to allow more intense deep reds, purples, and blues, the company states, while the light colors provide for better skin tones and subtle shadings.
Other features include a gold-plated, anti-static printhead capable of printing seven different droplet sizes; a newly designed feed adjuster; and a TU-3 take-up system. Print speed maxes out at 351 square feet/hour.
The latest version of Wasatch’s SoftRIP TX, engineered specifically for textile printing, boasts an improved Repeats feature with advanced drop and slide options and a “stretch” control that helps adjust for fabric shrinkage. SoftRIP TX 7.2 also features RIP speed enhancements, Wasatch reports.
This summer, EFI made perhaps the biggest news in digital textile printing when it announced that it had acquired Italy-based Reggiani Macchine, the manufacturer of industrial inkjet printers for printing onto fabrics. The Reggiani purchase moves EFI squarely into the high-volume/industrial digital-textile printing space. (Note: EFI also offers the Vutek TX3250r printer—a 126-inch machine for digitally printed fabrics and soft signage.)
5. Promotional goes viral.
Savvy shops can add promotional materials and other three-dimensional objects to the array of applications they already handle by using the right technology. Flat printing is fine, but if you can also accommodate 3D and thicker materials, you have added to your solutions toolbox.
One such machine for these applications is Roland’s VersaUV LEJ-640FT flatbed UV LED printer. An extension of the company’s VersaUV LEF printer series, the 64-by-98-inch LEJ-640FT can accommodate heavy rigid substrates weighing up to 220 pounds and measuring up to six inches thick. Applications can include promotional products (golf balls, phone cases, pens, etc.), fine art, point-of-purchase displays, signage, and much more. The machine features a maximum print speed of 133 square feet/hour, a top resolution of 1440 dpi, and VersaWorks RIP software.
Shops seeking a similar solution with a smaller footprint might look to Mutoh’s ValueJet 426UF: The tabletop UV-LED printer measures 13-by-19 inches and can print onto a variety of materials, including 3D objects up to 2.75-inches thick. It features a CMYK+White and Varnish inkset, a vacuum table for accuracy, and Mutoh’s Intelligent Interweave i² print technology to help eliminate banding.
This is, of course, just one take on trends; we urge you do your due diligence by also attending the tradeshows, networking with your peers, and consulting with printer manufacturers/distributors prior to finalizing any purchase.
By Gregory Sharpless, a Cincinnati-based freelance writer and the former Editor-in-Chief of The Big Picture and Digital Output magazines. He has covered wide format printing since the technology’s beginnings.
All photos: Roland DGA.
