Hardware - Industrial Print

Polytype is pleased to announce the successful installation of the swissQprint Impala at Print Leader in Buffalo, NY.

“After spending two days looking at the UV flatbed printers at the ISA 2011 show, it did nothing but bolster our confidence that we had made the very best decision for our business. There was no machine that we looked at that could match the Impala's combination of speed and superior image quality,” shared Eric Leader, Production Manager and Owner at Print Leader.

“Polytype has once again raised the bar. We have been one of their customers for over 8 years, and with their cutting-edge technology, superior print quality, and the finest technicians and support staff, they have consistently provided us with a rock-solid foundation for us to build our business on.”

Print Leader is a unique blend of advanced digital printing technology combined with a high level of expertise in graphic services. They cover the entire span from artwork creation and printing to installation on-site; and specialise in providing grand format printing, photographic prints, and on-demand document printing for discerning markets including casino, banking, airports and tradeshows.

They offer environmentally-friendly UV inks and toners in combination with green or recyclable substrates for most applications. Print Leader has been providing high-quality solutions for over 40 years.

About Polytype America: Polytype (with worldwide headquarters in Fribourg, Switzerland) is renowned in the wide-format digital inkjet space as a distributor and manufacturer of resilient, reliable printing technologies for the production of many different decorative, display and industrial applications. With characteristic Swiss attention to precision engineering inherent to all of its technologies, its range of wide- and super-wide format UV-curable printers is recognised for its ability to produce high-quality graphics on a practically unlimited range of substrates. Polytype America is located in Mahwah, NJ and is also the exclusive distributor for the swissQprint ‘Oryx’ and ‘Impala’ printers.

Specialized Output Printing, Inc. in Waukesha, Wis., hopes to be the best silent partner a printing company ever had. Owner Russ Brock launched the wide-format trade shop in 2011 to produce jobs for other printers that require special equipment or as overflow. The startup firm's Screen Truepress Jet2500UV grand-format inkjet printer is giving clients flawless output, fast turnarounds and remarkable substrate flexibility.

"A huge void exists in terms of commercial printers that may operate wide-format machines but don't really emphasize that part of their business and digital print shops that aren't able to fully develop their capabilities," Brock said. "We plan to be a hot laser instead of a headlight - to be the best at inkjet printing for the trade. Printing companies can send us their overflow work or new work they've been turning away and not have to worry about it being done well and on time."

Brock got his start in the prepress side of printing in the graphic arts dealer network in the 1970s. Over the years, he became fascinated by the possibilities color inkjet printing offered.

"I've visited many different shops and observed the strengths and weaknesses of every combination of wide-format inkjet system," Brock explained. "I always wanted to get directly involved in inkjet printing but was never in the right position to make it happen."

That is, until recently. Brock installed the Truepress Jet2500UV along with board-cutting equipment in a 4,000-square-foot manufacturing space. Specialized Output Printing has the option to double its production space if necessary. Brock selected CGS Publishing Technologies' ORIS Color Tuner//Web professional contract proofing system.

"We will run 'lean and mean' in the early days of the company, though not at the expense of serving our customers," Brock said. "Quality is first and foremost. Every one of our staff of five has years of hands-on inkjet experience. We have high-end graphic talent who can create interesting custom projects. Buying the appropriate technology also allows us to automate tasks and control quality with fewer people."

Brock's familiarity with inkjet technology served him well in deciding which printing system to purchase.

"The Truepress Jet2500UV can do so many things other devices can't do," he said. "It prints on all the vinyl and plastic substrates, ceramic tile, wood and metal up to 2 inches thick. We use CMYK plus white ink. The multiple layer option enables us to print seven image layers, which improves the performance of double-sided window stickers and backlit displays."

Specialized Output Printing is well positioned where image quality is the primary concern.

Wide-format inkjet is no longer just for billboards and signs to be read from several yards away," Brock said. "The Truepress Jet2500UV prints detailed images at up to 1,500 dpi resolution. It handles 4-point type for signage that is intended to be read close up. No machine can print better than this. It's a surgical instrument."

In June, 2011, Duggal Visual Solutions, Inc. fully installed the first Durst Rhotex 320 in the United States. The Durst Rhotex 320 is the first industrial speed dye-sublimation printer offering the highest quality fabric printing available.

The Durst Rhotex 320 is the first 10.5-foot wide (3.2m) printer developed specifically for fabric / “soft signage” printing. This unique printer not only has Durst’s latest print technology, it is also environmentally “friendly”.

“The Rhotex 320 allows us to offer our customers the highest quality dye-sublimation printing possible at impressive speeds, which in turn allows us to be the leader in the growing fabric market,” Duggal CEO Mike Duggal said.  “We are excited about adding this to our growing list of offerings for our clients. And the fact that the Rhotex 320 is environmentally friendly, using VOC-free water based inks, fits well with Duggal’s corporate ‘green philosophy’ and is an added bonus for our customers as well.”

“As digital imaging technologies progress and both printing processes and media improve, the benefits of ‘soft signage’ are becoming more apparent,” said Christopher Howard, Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Durst U.S.  “Mike Duggal and the people at Duggal Visual Solutions understand this as well as anyone, and we’re pleased with their latest ‘first’ – the first Rhotex 320 in the United States.”

Durst’s Rhotex 320 – winner of the United Kingdom’s prestigious Angel Award for 2010, which acknowledges product innovation most likely to have a significant impact in the wide-format sector – was designed specifically to address the growing popularity of lighter-weight, easier-to-install, higher margin, reusable and “green” media options in production environments.

This wide-format roll-to-roll platform utilizes environmentally water-based dispersed dye inks, and comes equipped with the Quadro® Array 30D AQ print heads configured to print seven colors (CMYK + Light Cyan, Light Magenta, and Gray) delivering photographic quality at up to 775 s.f./hr.  Fabrics printed with these inks are entirely environmentally friendly, recyclable and disposable.

A combination of all the printer’s capabilities and Duggal’s array of material options from sheer voile and poly silk to back drop canvas and wrinkle-free media Duggal can provide a solution custom tailored to meet your visual needs.

Duggal Visual Solution and Durst Image Technology hope to continue their partnership together to bring more options, higher quality and faster turnaround times to their customers.

Heritage Paper has gained a competitive advantage in the packaging market as one  of the first U.S. firms to install an HP Scitex FB7500 Printer for high-quality, short- to medium-run printing on corrugated board.

The Livermore, Calif.-based company, which specializes in analog flexographic production, has developed a fast-growing niche in short-run, high-end digitally printed packaging and displays. To meet surging demand for digital printing, the company replaced a competing UV ink wide-format device with the HP Scitex FB7500 Printer.

The new printer, which Heritage purchased from HP Scitex distributor PriscoDigital (www.prisco.com), helps Heritage grow its business by providing the speed and flexibility to handle higher run lengths.

"We had to run our previous digital printing system in a slower, 'high-quality' mode to eliminate banding issues," said John Tatum, CEO, Heritage Paper. "The HP Scitex FB7500 Printer, on the other hand, produces high quality at higher speeds, which significantly expands our capabilities.

"Instead of digital being affordable for run lengths in the hundreds or low thousands, we can offer our customers run lengths up to 10,000 with digital, which opens many more opportunities," added Tatum.

Expanding market opportunities

Heritage's customers are pursuing digital printing for a variety of reasons.

• Prior to the new installation, Heritage sent client work needing higher-quality, medium-run printing out for lithographic printing at a local trade shop. Heritage would subsequently mount the outsourced litho sheets to corrugated board to complete the job. The HP Scitex FB7500 Printer eliminates that process, producing offset-quality imaging directly on corrugated substrates at a lower cost with faster turnaround times.
• Many marketers are boosting revenues through regionalized, versioned and test-marketing designs produced in shorter runs that are too expensive to produce using analog flexography.
• Small business customers, including several Northern California premium wineries, can now purchase high-end packaging and displays in the smaller quantities they require.
• Larger customers looking to streamline their packaging supply chains are switching from flexo to digital printing on the HP Scitex FB7500 Printer to move to more sustainable, just-in-time manufacturing.

Re-thinking the packaging supply chain
The move to more sustainable manufacturing and services also aligns with the overall corporate philosophy at Heritage, a company that powers its plant with a $3.5 million solar panel roof. Digital printing reduces the cost and resources needed to maintain printed packaging inventories, as well as the significant waste from design changes that make pre-printed packaging obsolete.

Unlike its previous digital printing system, Heritage's HP Scitex FB7500 Printer has a gloss print mode that eliminates the need for lamination, a process that can make corrugated board non-recyclable. This feature improves the overall sustainability of Heritage's digitally printed products.

Heritage's new HP solution, which prints at speeds in excess of 5,300 sq.ft. per hour, can run rigid and flexible media up to .98 inches thick, in sizes up to 65x126 inches. Its high productivity makes the HP Scitex FB7500 Printer a cost-effective digital solution for many packaging, signage and graphics jobs typically produced using analog equipment. The printer is one of the first packaging industry flatbed wide-format printer sales completed by authorized distributor PriscoDigital.

"Heritage Paper clearly is on the cutting edge of the packaging industry, and its ability to identify and implement the advantages of digital technology for its customers differentiates Heritage in a dramatic way," said Steve Zunde, president, PriscoDigital. "We are extremely pleased to add Heritage Paper to our growing list of HP Scitex FB7500 users, and are excited to showcase the company's superb site, which houses this state-of-the -art technology, to other prospects."

FUJIFILM Dimatix strengthened its standing as the world's leading supplier of drop-on-demand inkjet printheads for industrial applications with an impressive showing to attendees of the 19th annual Shanghai International Ad, Print, Pack & Paper Expo. The company surpassed expectations with the range and versatility of its inkjet technology both in the Dimatix booth and around the show floor, where the company's high-performance Q-Class printheads and respected Skywalker and Nova product lines powered more than 30 different printer designs.

The 2011 APPPEXPO, which took place July 6-9 at the 150,000-square-meter Shanghai New International Expo Centre, provided a major business platform for leading global advertising and sign companies and their suppliers from around the world.

From Printing and Decorating to Materials Deposition

With its more than 100,000 visitors, APPPEXPO 2011 set the stage for FUJIFILM Dimatix to demonstrate the performance and versatility of its drop-on-demand inkjet printheads for applications from wide-format graphics production to decorating products from textiles and wood to ceramics.

The company also tapped the venue's international reach to showcase its DMP-2800 and DMP-3000. Dimatix Materials Printers are designed for non-contact printing of functional fluids for a range of applications from assessing DNA arrays and developing products for biotechnology applications to manufacturing printed electronics.

The DMP-2800 is a bench-top materials printer designed for micro-precision jetting of functional fluids onto virtually any surface. It can build and define patterns over an area of 200 x 300 mm onto substrates up to 25 mm thick using single-use Dimatix Materials Cartridge printheads based on the company's proprietary Silicon MEMS (Si MEMS) technology.

The freestanding DMP-3000 features a printable area of 300 x 300 mm and positional accuracy and repeatability of ± 5 microns and ± 1 micron, respectively. Designed for advanced R&D and process prototyping of small manufacturing volumes, it can jet fluids using Dimatix Materials Cartridge printheads or precision 128-channel Dimatix D-Class silicon MEMS printheads designed for high throughput.

FUJIFILM Dimatix also demonstrated a version of a MerlinTM-single-pass concept press in a web configuration simulating the production of RFID tags, printed electronic circuits, and corrugated paper product decoration. Merlin systems are comprised of an industrial controller with support for up to 48 printheads. Printheads can be arranged in various width clusters from 2.5 to 30-inches, in monochrome to more than 4-colors with laned or contiguous imaging possible. Merlin systems are easily integrated to existing production lines and are used for product decoration and materials deposition manufacturing applications.

Dimatix Based OEM Printing Systems

In addition to the various displays at the FUJIFILM Dimatix booth, the company's inkjet printheads were represented around the Expo floor by leading OEMs who collectively exhibited more than 30 high-performance and value priced UV and solvent printers based on Dimatix printheads. These included an exceptionally strong showing by Chinese printer manufacturers Shenzen Runtianzhi Image Technology Co. Ltd., GongZheng Technology Development Co., Ltd., Wit-Color Digital Science & Technology Co., Hangzhou Honghua Digital Technology Stock Co. Ltd., and Teckwin International.

Strong demand for the Dimatix 512-jet Polaris printhead was evident in the many OEM products on the show floor that incorporated the new Q-Class technology in their latest wide-format and flatbed inkjet printer designs. Most of these featured new Polaris PQ-512/15 and PQ-512/35 units with as few as two printheads providing a total of 1,024 channels to units that were equipped with as many as 12 printheads for jetting ink through more than 6,000 independent nozzles. Included among them were a new 5-meter-wide UV design from Beijing Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. (JHF), and a new 5-meter-wide UV model from Teckwin, each of which featured 12 Polaris PQ-512/15 heads.

The Polaris PQ-512 series are general-purpose drop-on-demand printheads that utilize the binary operating mode of Dimatix' VersaDropTM jetting technology and Q-Class construction to deliver adjustable ink drop sizes from 15 to 150 picoliters from 512 individually addressable nozzles, at frequencies up to 45 kHz with exceptional straightness.

The Q-Class platform also accommodates a broad range of inks including UV-curable, aggressive organic solvents and aqueous inks making the Polaris series and other Q-Class printheads suitable for a wide variety of commercial and industrial printing applications such as wide-format, label and decorative printing, at resolutions to 1000 dpi.

This hallmark Q-Class flexibility and performance extends to Dimatix Sapphire and Emerald printheads with VersaDropTM grayscale operating modes for high-performance graphics printing applications.

Additional printer models displayed on the show floor included a Nova-based solvent printer from Korean manufacturer DGI Company, and a Skywalker HD design demonstrated by Wit-Color.

"The Shanghai International Ad, Print, Pack & Paper Expo is recognized as a world-class event for the global advertising and sign industry and a showcase for inkjet technology in the Far East," said Russell Brown, Marketing Manager, OEM Printheads. "Our presence at this year's show clearly demonstrated the strength of our position in the Chinese inkjet printing market with a comprehensive range of inkjet printheads capable of addressing the broad spectrum of industrial applications."

Probo/Sign, a Dutch print service provider, just invested in the new Durst Rho 1000L. It’s the second Durst printer in just a year for this fast growing company of owner Erwin Postma. Last year’s investment in a Durst Rho 500R resulted in a large sales boost. Postma is now expecting another sale boost as a result of installing the Durst Rho 1000L in the beginning of June. The printer was delivered to Probo/Sign directly from FESPA Digital in Hamburg where the Durst Rho 1000L made its debut show.

Probo/Sign works for resellers like sign makers, exhibition builders and ad agents. It was only in 2001 that Erwin Postma took over Probo/Sign. It was then a small sign shop in Dokkum in the Northern area of the Netherlands with just two employees. At present the company has over 40 employees and takes more than 100 print orders a day.

In 2001 Postma invested in his first large format solvent printer. In 2003 he bought a hybrid UV printer. The decision a year ago to equip the Rho 500R with white ink proved to be a very good one. In the first year we printed a lot of 3M ClearVision on it. This investment gave us a significant growth in 2010.

When the moment came to replace the hybrid UV printer, white ink was for sure on the wish list. One of the applications for the Rho 1000L will be to produce backlit prints directly on transparent PET plates using 3 layers of ink (cmyk, white, cmyk). Postma: With the Rho 1000L we can take over jobs that are currently still printed in offset, for in stands for print backlit plates. Postma already booked the first order from an offset printer. He expects more orders from offset printers all for all kinds of POS materials. With the Durst Rho 1000L we can offer our customers the right price and speed needed for this kind of applications that mostly run from 100 to 400 copies.

Postma took half one year to visit several vendors to look what they had to offer. The print quality was the deciding factor among some other things. One of these factors is that the Rho 1000L is very flexible when it comes to input and output. Postma: ‘’We start now with the automated plate input, a stacker for the output and a hand table for the extraordinary print jobs. It’s nice that we can still make other choices in the future. In the first week we already experienced how important the automatic plate loading is. You can run the printer on engine speed with no time waste while it continues feeding plates.  Should we need even more speed than the 1000L can offer we can easily upgrade it to the Durst 1000.