One obvious trend that struck me from this year’s Fespa Digital show in Munich is that a lot of vendors are looking at the mid-volume flatbed market, which indicates that there’s a growing number of wide format users that are confident of having enough work to fill one of these machines.
This is significant because up until now the market for flatbed printers has mainly split two-ways: general commercial display work where image quality was essential in coping with a wide range of work, but where volume was reasonably low; and the high end market where speed was more important than quality. But we’re now seeing a market emerge that wants both quality and volume.
The most obvious example of this is Canon’s new Océ Arizona 6100 series, which I’ve already covered in-depth. Fujifilm has opted to rebadge this as the Acuity F, rather than going ahead with the Avoset, developed by Inca Digital, that it showed at Fespa last year. Tudor Morgan, marketing manager for Fujifilm Speciality Ink Systems, explained: “What we like about the F is that you can work both sides of the bed, whereas with the Avoset you have to wait for it to print and then unload and reload it.”
Fujifilm also played with the balance between speed and image quality on its Onsets by showing a new R40i model that sits inbetween the existing high speed S and high quality Q models. Morgan says that the Onset Q was successful in Asia, but less so in Europe, where it was seen to be too slow. Thus the R40i is up to 100sqm/hr faster than the Q-series. It uses Spectra printheads giving it a maximum resolution of 1200 dpi with a 14 picolitre drop size. As with the other Onsets, it takes media up to 3.14m x 1.6m. There’s a choice of configurations from four to seven colours, with two channels set aside for white ink.
Canon sees its main competition for the 6100 series as coming from Durst and SwissQPrint, both of whom showed new printers. SwissQ had a new version of its Nyala flatbed, which has gained a bigger bed – 3.2×2 metres over the previous 3.2x 1.6 metres – but with the same footprint. The Nyala2 uses the faster 1024i printheads from Konica Minolta giving it a production speed of 206 sqm/hr.
Durst has specialised in cannibalising other vendor’s printheads to build its own arrays and so has been able to make a High Speed version of its P10 UV hybrid by squeezing in more nozzles on the same printhead shuttle. Thus the P10 HS has a maximum print speed of 400 sqm/hr with the same 1000 dpi resolution. It also gains LED Pin curing, which is used to fix the inks before the conventional curing stage to cope with the faster speed.
Screen is also active in this market, with its Truepress Jet W3200UV, which can now produce up to 150 sqm/hr. There are eight ink channels so it can be configured for up to six colours plus two whites. Its targeted at the POS, signage and decor markets and takes rigid and flexible media up to 3.2 x 1.6m in size and up to a maximum 50mm thickness.
But these printers are not just about increased productivity. They typically offer more efficient use of ink, and a different price point for those inks so that the margins per job are better than with less productive printers. The moral here is that bigger jobs, or at least longer print runs, can benefit from economies of scale. And judging by the number of these mid-volume printers being launched, an increasing number of sign makers have already come to this conclusion.
Leave a Reply