EFI launches Bolt textile printer

EFI Reggiani has shown off a new single pass textile printer, the Bolt, which is mainly aimed at the apparel and décor markets. This is the company’s first single pass textile printer – the existing Reggiani inkjet machines are scanning devices.

EFI has developed this Bolt single pass textile printer for the apparel and decor markets.

EFI says that it has worked with a leading printhead manufacturer, which I believe to be Fujifilm and that this is the first time that EFI has used a Fujifilm head. I understand that the head in question is the Samba GMA99 printhead, which EFI has tweaked to its requirements. This means that the heads feature ink recirculation and automatic head cleaning, as well as producing variable sized droplets – in this case from 5 to 30 picolitres. Maximum resolution is 600 x 4800 dpi. However, it’s worth noting that the GMA99 head produces 300dpi resolution – I believe that EFI has staggered the heads in pairs so that each pair gives 600dpi resolution. The base configuration is four print bars but it can be fitted with up to 12.

The printer is capable of producing up to 90mpm at 600 x 600 dpi resolution though obviously this speed is heavily dependent on the print quality required so that 60mpm might be a more realistic production speed.

It will print direct to fabric up to 1950mm wide, though the maximum print width is 1830mm. It uses water-based inks, with a choice of reactive for cotton, viscose and silk and pigment for polyester. There are currently seven colours for the reactive inkset – cyan, magenta, yellow, black, orange, red and blue – and six for the pigment inkset – CMYK plus red and blue – but EFI is working to add two further pigment inks.

There’s a separate inline dryer unit, with a choice of gas, oil or steam heating sources. Curiously there’s also an option to add an analog rotary print unit for special effects such as gold, bronze and silver lacquers. This has a 640mm repeat.

Adele Genoni, EFI Reggiani Vice President and General Manager, commented: “Our EFI colleagues’ proven, worldwide expertise in single-pass technology and, most importantly, EFI Reggiani’s serious commitment to listening to and addressing our textile customers’ needs, have allowed us to achieve incredible results with our newest print technology. The EFI Reggiani Bolt re-writes the rules of digital textile single-pass printing, delivering superior throughput and quality with a highly competitive return on investment for customers. We are excited to bring this technology to our customers and see their businesses succeed and grow.”

The Bolt comes with an EFI Fiery DFE with RIP and colour management technologies running on a Fiery XB-bladed server. EFI has also thrown in a year’s subscription to the EFI Fiery DesignPro for fashion design, which runs alongside Adobe’s Creative Cloud applications. According to EFI, Fiery DesignPro reduces the time needed to create colour books, repeats, colourways and prepare files for production to minutes instead of hours.

The printer is available to order now with the first units scheduled for delivery in Q1 2019.


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