Hardware

Spandex, the pioneering one-stop supplier of complete and innovative solutions to the digital printing and sign making industries worldwide, has announced the availability of Mutoh’s new, versatile and cost-effective Kona Series of high-performance multi-purpose vinyl cutting plotters. Designed to meet the specific requirements of home, office or professional sign cutting applications, Mutoh’s Kona Series of drag-knife cutting plotters offers users a plethora of advantages, including superior cutting quality and excellent tracking.

Spandex will supply all three models of the new Mutoh Kona range, all of which deliver advanced precision and performance for media up to 1mm in thickness. The Kona Series comprises the Kona SCL-760, offering a maximum sheet/roll media width of 1000 mm; the Kona SCL-1400 with maximum sheet/roll media width of 1640 mm; and the Kona SCL-1650, offering a maximum sheet/roll media width of 1890mm.

EPOS™ technology for automatic contour cutting and cut through
All three Mutoh Kona variants feature Mutoh’s integrated EPOS ® (electronic positioning) feature as standard. As well as traditional vinyl cutting, this laser-based optical sensor technology allows users to benefit from automatic contour cutting of pre-printed signs and stickers. In addition, EPOS™ incorporates a cut through feature which offers the capability to create convenient individual stickers for promotional, instructive or informative purposes. This innovative attribute enables the Mutoh Kona to provide a low-cost poster trimming solution for individual samples or small production volumes. For optimum user comfort, the Kona also includes a special print and cut workflow that will practically reduce operator errors to zero.

Furthermore, Mutoh’s new Kona cutting plotters are equipped with several features that afford increased functionality and ensure an efficient workflow; including an intuitive and user-friendly, full-colour, multi-language LCD touch screen. The Mutoh Kona Series also features a newly designed automatic sheet-off mechanism, incorporating a rotatable long-life blade with four cutting sides.

Dual Roll Support System
Additional user benefits are provided by media support rollers (standard on the Mutoh Kona 1400 and Kona 1650), which allow easy handling of regular vinyl and ensure perfect tracking. An optional second roll-off system is available for contact-free loading of pre-printed rolls. This enables users to maintain quality by ensuring freshly printed rolls are free of damage, marks or scratches.

The Spandex-supplied Kona includes a two-year spare parts warranty, as well as various optional extras to enhance productivity.

Investing in new technology in the current economic climate seems a daunting prospect for most. However, due to the success of its first HP Scitex FB950 installation, German advertising agency, Lohrer Werbung, recently installed its second HP Scitex FB950 Printer. As a result of these HP investments, the company has increased its productivity, flexibility and ultimately its profitability.

 

Challenge

• Enhance production capabilities and capacity to accommodate an increasing workload
• Offer an end-to-end solution for advertising and marketing materials
• Provide a more flexible, digital technology offering for its in-house design team

Solution

• 2 x HP Scitex FB950 Printers

Results

• HP Scitex FB950 Printers provide media versatility, increasing design creativity, business revenue and customer satisfaction.
• Increased production capacity enables Lohrer Werbung to take on more jobs and improve turnover.
• Utilising the new HP Scitex FB950 Printers, customers now experience an efficient, hassle-free print.

Bringing print in-house

Established in 1993, Lohrer Werbung quickly became the agency of choice for a number of high-profile blue-chip brands, creating corporate identities, marketing campaigns and collateral. Indoor and outdoor signage, show-room design and interior design are just a few of the many products and services that Lohrer Werbung has added to its portfolio.

Production of its clients’ marketing materials was initially outsourced to local print service providers, but this led to a lack of control over pricing, print quality and delivery schedules. The answer, Lohrer Werbung concluded, was to invest in in-house printing solutions. As the benefits of having its print production onsite became apparent, this initially small-scale venture evolved into the 1500m² (approximately 16,000ft²) production and office facility Lohrer Werbung operates from today.

“The design team at Lohrer Werbung would often come up with innovative and highly targeted marketing solutions and advertising campaigns that could not be produced on our existing screen-print systems,” explains Thomas Lohrer, manager and owner of Lohrer Werbung. ”Therefore, we decided to invest in a digital, wide format printer and the HP Scitex FB950 seemed to meet all of our requirements.”

“In 2008, our production facility installed the first HP Scitex FB950 Printer in Germany and we haven’t looked back since! The printer ran extremely smoothly, which is a real testament to the machine as it was a brand new product at the time. In March 2009 we installed our second HP Scitex FB950 Printer to increase our production capacity and enable us to meet growing demand. As a result, I would say that the flexibility of our offering has increased by 100 percent. We can now print onto one substrate on  one machine and a different substrate on the other, or set the machines up to do different jobs at the same time.”

Eradicating limits on creativity

Thomas Lohrer also believes that having the HP Scitex FB950 Printers on site has enabled his designers to be more creative with their campaign and signage ideas.

“Not only can the designers see that virtually any rigid or flexible material can be printed on and  the print still be cost-effective, but being in the same building as the HP Scitex FB950 Printers, they can test new ideas and see the print quality first hand,” Lohrer explains. “We print on glass, aluminium, acrylic, wood, textiles and a lot of other materials. Now that we print in-house, our customers can come to us with almost any idea and our team can confidently say that we can produce it. In a way, this has redefined creativity for our design team as it has allowed them to extend their imagination beyond the previous screen-print based production limitations.”

The HP Scitex FB950 Printer has an industrial vacuum belt system that enables printing on warped, uneven or heavy media up to 125lb (56.7kg), making it extremely versatile. With automatic printhead height adjustment, it can also print on rigid media up to 2.5in (6.3cm) thick and produce great detail with up to 1200 x 600 optimised dpi and smooth colour transitions.

“We have a showroom with a lot of examples of signage and materials from previous marketing campaigns. Among the more unique applications are graphics on trailers, floor tiles, glass doors, and stone. When our customers look around the showroom, they are always thoroughly impressed with the intricate details captured in the image, no matter what the substrate or size of the application.” Lohrer continues.

Meeting the customers’ needs

Adding print to its list of services, Lohrer Werbung now provides a complete end-to-end solution, from design to production and installation.

Lohrer says, “Our goal is to provide customers with a one-stop, hassle-free solution. They may have little or no knowledge of how to produce the campaign they have in mind, and we are happy to be able to offer technical advice and make their ideas into a reality. Now that we have the two HP Scitex FB950 Printers, we can also produce cost-effective, short test runs, printing onto different substrates to experiment with what will provide the required impact.”

The future

“Looking back just two years ago, I would not have guessed that we would be doing what we’re doing now. I think being as flexible as possible with our product and service offering is a must for the future,” explains Lohrer. “Our recent HP investments have already increased our flexibility significantly, enabling us to deliver a wider range of products and fulfil a larger amount of jobs. This will definitely have a positive impact on the success of the business for the foreseeable future. Beyond that, the possibilities are infinite.”

Yorkshire based imageData Group has chosen to install the :M-Press Tiger at their Howden site. The new press is supplied by THIEME KPX and will be installed later this year.

imageData Group Chairman Roger Birkin explains: “We have been involved with the :M-Press project from the very beginning, and have closely watched its development and progress. We believe that the new :M-Press Tiger now delivers the speed, the quality and the cost-of-ownership that will make a significant contribution to our production capacity alongside our other investments.”

imageData Group CEO David Danforth adds: “We have elected to make this significant investment at this time in order to meet specific customer needs. This system supports our ongoing efforts to grow the development of our large and medium format digital print capabilities.”

THIEME KPX Managing Director Bill Kippax says “The :M-Press is built on a Thieme screen printing base and adds the new :M-Press Tiger UV inkjet shuttle. It makes the system 300 percent more productive than the original M-Press with an even higher quality output.

With virtually no set-up time required, the effective output of the :M-Press TIGER is equal to traditional screen printing for the majority of common screen printing run-lengths. We are delighted that imageData Group has selected the :M-Press Tiger as their next major investment. imageData Group has had traditional Thieme screen presses for 8 years, and we are pleased to be able to continue the relationship into the digital era with Agfa Graphics :M-Press Tiger.

Mimaki Engineering Co., Ltd announces its new ink cost saving dye-sublimation and direct-to-textile inkjet printer, Tx400-1800D for textile printing. The Tx400-1800D will be shipped in Europe from February 2010 onwards.

TX400-1800D employs an innovative feature that enables the user to adjust the ink volume that is jetted by the print head according to the type of cloth and design. This offers the possibility of printing different color depths to achieve amazing design effects.

In addition, according to the print job, Tx400-1800D can accommodate both direct-to-textile and dye-sublimation printing employing sublimation media. It ensures that the machine’s possibilities enable broader product portfolios and higher productivity at print service providers.

Three different inks, dye sublimation ink, reactive dye ink and acid dye ink are available. Environmental impact is lowered as the ink is delivered in 2l-ink containers, whose outer case is reusable. This is also reflected in substantially lower ink costs.

The newly developed dye-sublimation ink excels in low vapor emission. In comparison with the former ink service providers will thus be able to control more than before the impact of vapor on the media as well as see a significant enhancement in image quality and sharpness.

Mimaki has equipped the Tx400-1800D with its Bulk Ink System (MBIS) and its patented UISS (Uninterrupted Ink Supply System) to ensure automatic switching of inks when one 2l-ink container runs empty without interrupting printing. A maximum of four liters of ink (2x2l per color) enables unattended printing for longer periods and to ensure bigger print runs.

The Tx400-1800D for direct-to-textile as well as dye-sublimation printing thus combines modern technologies for textile applications that are the driving force behind the move from screen printing to on-demand digital textile printing.

An additional model within the Tx400 series, that will be shipped from spring ’10 onwards, will feature an adhesion belt carrier system to stabilize flexible materials that tend to stretch and contract during printing.

“Tx400-1800D is a revolutionary development in uniting dye sublimation and direct-to-textile printing in one machine thus offering an unlimited choice in applications. We are happy that we can offer such a business enhancing machine to our customers”, says Kazuhide Yokoyama from Mimaki’s TA Business Unit.

The high-speed Canon iPF 8000S pictured above is available with a £1550 discount until December 18th 2009.

 

Large Format Printers (LFPs) are increasingly taking a central role in the commercial print environment, moving on from days of past when poster and proofing work was the preserve of the specialist print shop. Nowadays LFPs can integrate seamlessly with existing workflows to become a must have for a savvy printer, capable of producing a variety of applications, including posters, photo-book applications, point-of-sale, signage and displays.

With a low total cost of ownership it is reassuring to know that a LFP can be installed and running in your premises for as little as £1,500. While printers are looking for new revenue streams in order to ride out the current downturn, they are also finding that the more diverse their business is, the more chance they have of not only surviving the current dip but potentially even growing their client base. If printers are familiar with the workflows required to run digital presses, then an LFP should slot seamlessly into the existing set up.

For the next month, in the run up to Christmas, Canon is running a Star Buy promotion on its leading range of LFPs that can potentially save up to £1,550 on the purchase cost of each model. The devices included in this offer include the eight-colour 44” Canon imagePROGRAF iPF8000S and 12-colour imagePROGRAF iPF8100 for the sign and graphics markets, and the 17” imagePROGRAF iPF5100, 24” imagePROGRAF iPF6100 and iPF6200 models for the proofing and photographic/fine art markets.

Canon has not stood still since introducing its first LFPs and is continually refining and upgrading its product lines to improve quality and reduce output costs. This has led to a number of awards for print quality and reliability. In a series of benchmark tests through the world renowned Buyers’ Laboratory Inc (BLI) last year, the imagePROGRAF iPF8000S and imagePROGRAF iPF8100 both scored highly against its two market-leading competitors, namely the HP DesignJet Z6100 and Epson Stylus PRO 9880.

The independent report found the imagePROGRAF iPF8000S used 34.5% less ink than competitor products running under identical test conditions. Figures for Canon’s imagePROGRAF iPF8100 were equally as impressive, with the Canon using 31.6% less ink. In addition, the Canon iPF8000S can save an additional 8% of ink usage if switched into economy running mode.

The final tests from BLI, covering colour gamut volume, showed the iPF8000S had a larger colour volume when compared to HP DesignJet Z6100 and the Canon iPF8100, had a comparable colour gamut volume when measured against the Epson Stylus PRO 9880.

All printers are available from Canon accredited resellers and the promotion runs until 18th December.

Please call Canon on 01737 229 022 or visit http://www.canon.co.uk/large_format_review for more information on these devices and the Star Buy promotion.

Drytac has engineered a new customisable power connection option for its VersaCoater XL80, allowing users to operate the machine using 25 percent less energy.

"We’ve made several other upgrades to the VersaCoater line recently, but the reduced power consumption has received the most attention,” said Jim Tatum, vice president of Drytac’s liquid coating division. "When economic times are difficult, everyone is trying to get a competitive edge and reducing cost while increasing speed is one reason why people will still make this type of investment".

With the new power option shop owners will be able to reduce electrical costs while still producing the same quality coated projects.