Nessan Cleary reviews this entry-level printer which that claims the fastest speed in its class.
Fujifilm has launched the Acuity 1600 LED, a 1.6m hybrid printer built around a roll-fed chassis with tables supplied for handling rigid media. It’s built on a Mimaki chassis but product manager Gary Barnes says that it’s the Fujifilm technology that sets it aside: “This includes the ink that is developed by us and tuned for LED. That then passes through Q class heads from Fujifilm Dymatix, the same family that is used on the Inca Onset. And then there is the Fujifilm designed LED curing system.”
This is an entry-level model meant as a stepping stone into UV production. As such it competes directly with LED printers from both Roland and Mimaki but Barnes claims that it’s the fastest printer in its class with a top productivity of 20m2/hr. There are several quality modes which offer more passes but Barnes says that none of the beta sites have used the slowest, with everyone producing sellable work in the 10m2/hr and 13m2/hr modes.
Barnes says that Fujifilm is trying to target both the commercial print market looking to bring large-format work in-house, and those in the screen print sector looking to move into inkjet. He believes that the LED curing is important to these markets because of the range of substrates that it can cope with, including different paper stocks and heat sensitive materials.
LED curing has not always had a good reputation for scratch resistance but Barnes claims this is not a problem for this printer, explaining: “We have tuned the inks with the right photo initiators and the resin to match the output of the LED perfectly.” He adds: “We expect to see LED taking a much stronger place in the inkjet market because of the benefits of it. You can use far more heat sensitive materials, the lamps have a longer life and it has a much lower power usage.” He also says that the inks have good flexibility though you can’t necessarily wrap a car with them. The prints themselves have a satin finish.
The machine has eight ink channels with the full inkset comprising CMYK plus light cyan and light magenta, as well as white and clear inks. However, though you can print the white inks before or after the process colours, you can’t print both white and clear inks with the process colours, mainly because all the printheads are arranged in a single row.
The machine relies on a set of pinch rollers at the back to move the media through the printer. Technical specialist Adam Moore says that Fujifilm has beefed up the rollers following feedback from beta sites but that these rollers can cope with all the rigid and roll-fed media. He adds: “There are media guides at either side to keep the edges flat, and the LED curing doesn’t deform the media.”
As well as roll-fed media it takes rigid substrates up to 8 x 4ft (2.4 x 1.2m) and up to 12kg in weight, so it will easily handle a standard sheet of dibond or foam core. It handles media up to 13mm thick, and uses a potentiometer to measure the thickness of the media and then automatically raises the Y bar accordingly, which makes for more accurate positioning of the media relative to the heads then a manual system would.
Surprisingly, Fujifilm has opted to rebadge a Mimaki Raster Link Rip rather than develop one of its own. However, Fujifilm has added its own tool for matching spot colours. This can automatically generate a colour comparison chart against the desired output colour and should make it easier for users to match spot colours.
The Acuity 1600 LED is priced at £66,500, which includes the printer, inks, Rip, training and parts and labour for a year.