Sophie Matthews-Paul provides guidelines on getting the quality you expect.
It’s a bit like like buying a new car; we all want a bargain but most of us also need a quality motor that won’t let us down and will match the claimed running costs and service charges. And, of course, we would like it to hold its value as the years pass to make sure that it’s been a worthwhile purchase. A wide-format inkjet printer is a similar type of investment, but it also needs to be able to return a profit.
These days the theatre of wide-format digital production is a large stage with many players of varying talent levels. In machine terms, the cast includes everything from small proofing printers up to sophisticated industrial-strength systems which cost about the same as a decent sized house in the country. Between these two extremes are dozens of solutions which should perform their designated functions and match their expected ROI, no matter their price tag.
But this is the real world. Although there are plenty of success stories about how machine investments have reaped dividends for the companies buying them, sadly there are also tales of woe from users who would cheerfully dump their printers in the nearest skip if they had the chance.
So, what makes a good machine? A piece of printing equipment might look nice and shiny on the surface, and appear to be producing excellent prints in demonstration or exhibition conditions. But does this mean that it’ll handle efficiently all the jobs that are thrown at it for years to come?
Running a printer in pre-conceived test conditions is rarely an accurate indication of how it will perform when faced with the rigours of everyday workloads. Consistency in manufacture leads to the printer’s ultimate performance when it’s in daily use. This plays an essential part in understanding whether or not a particular machine is worth its salt. Like Friday cars, it is a sad inevitability that every now and again a unit simply will not behave itself despite being, to all intents and purposes, identical to the one before it on the production line. Higher end wide-format printers are often tweaked to order depending on the customer requirements, with numbers of inks and options, such as double-sided printing, being extras that don’t get included until the main body of the system has been put together. Manual skills are as important considerations within the final build of the machine, and the relevance of quality controls are largely determined by the human factor and its overall influence. This is true whether complex calibration and alignment of components are involved or, even, basic nuts and bolts are handled with care.
What you see isn’t necessarily an assumption of what you get. Nestling among the companies that have been in the business of manufacturing inkjet equipment for many years are those that pop up out of nowhere, proclaiming to be the best thing since sliced bread. Clever marketing material and flashy websites tend to accompany these new entrants and, with no longevity behind them in production terms, it’s often all they’ve got to attract potential customers.
A good machine needs to manufactured from high quality components which match the price and performance points of the equipment. A low cost entry-level unit might not be finely honed out precision steel components, but it could still be an adequate solution for a user on a limited budget. Similarly, no-one would expect to pay £500, 000 or more to end up with a printer covered in rust spots.
Starting with build quality, a wide-format printer in any budgetary bracket needs to be solidly constructed and not look as though it’ll collapse the first time it’s asked to produce a handful of jobs. Machines which are demonstrated at trade shows can give users a basic indication of quality on this front, and it doesn’t take long to scrutinise the type of design and components which have been incorporated. Using exhibitions as a good starting point, a machine running in this type of environment should be producing prints, not concealing teams of engineers trying to get it to work. If a system doesn’t cut the mustard in these conditions, then its long-term capabilities might be questionable.
The complexity of machine construction is also a factor to be considered. Wide-format printers are the sum of various parts which need to work together seamlessly. The quality of the chassis shows the exterior build standards, but there are many other components which are essential when forming the whole, and it’s no secret that there will be elements within the system which come from third-party integrators. Printheads provide an excellent example of another’s products being used, with the majority still using Xaar or its licensees, products from the Fujifilm Dimatix stable or the latest Epson options. HP Scitex’s X2 MEMS heads are still relatively new, but didn’t come to market before years of rigorous testing, and other developers are starting to make waves in the industry.
What lies under the bonnet of a system is key to its reliability and performance, and the less visible components are those which promote quality. As such, they need to be paid more credence than whether the overall unit looks like a bread oven rather than a sleek piece of engineering painted in a bright and colourful livery. All that glisters is not gold, after all. The robustness of the printheads plays a vital role in any printing machine but so do the associated feed mechanisms, including meniscus pumps and electrical elements, and these are areas which can turn a promising piece of equipment into something which is difficult to maintain and run on a regular basis.
Similarly, feed mechanisms are crucial to ensuring that material handling does what it’s supposed to. Even the most basic of entry-level machines should be able to control the media being passed under its heads, whether it’s intended for flat-sheet or roll-fed production. Substrates that skew and end up out of alignment result in wasted jobs, a situation no display producer wants to be faced with.
The more expensive a printer is, the greater number of features likely to be incorporated within it as standard. Users buying an entry-level UV-curable machine will be likely to find that some of the finer adjustments need to be handled manually whereas, on an all-singing and all-dancing unit, automation often takes over. Typical examples are with the printhead alignment when optimising the height for different materials or in adjusting the strength of UV-curing lamps according to media.
When considering the quality of a printer, specification sheets have a tendency to be delightfully vague, often filled with unnecessary hyperbole and tedious rhetoric. There isn’t a manufacturer that doesn’t believe its machine to be the best in its class, and proclaiming this on product literature is commonplace. But viewing, even touching, and watching a unit in action is essential as this will reveal how honest these claims are likely to be.
A good printing machine will need to be set up correctly, of course, but indications of its standards of manufacture will pretty quickly become evident once it’s running. So a unit which has ink dripping down it, produces noticeable banding and smells of overheated oil should not inspire confidence, even if it is remarkably low in cost.
A printer is only as good as the work it produces, and the speed at which it can be set up for each job. Ease of changeover times is important too, as is the ability to monitor what’s happening during the process, such as ink usage and essential diagnostics. Swapping cartridges or refilling ink containers on the fly also saves time and waste, and simple routine maintenance procedures also help to cut back on downtime.
Bearing in mind the variable components which are incorporated into a printer, it is sometimes miraculous that these machines continue to produce excellent work, year in and year out, easily exceeding their expected life expectancy. It’s testimony to the quality of their original manufacture that there are still units in daily use which are more than a decade old and continuing to earn their keep.
An interesting point, in terms of machine design manufacture and build, lies in the people factor. The systems produced which are the results of clever integration and their final quality have human beings behind them; without these skills, the practical aspects of sensible engineering would be lost. New families of printers which might come from a recently formed company usually are the fruits of years of experience in the teams who have devised them. As such, they shouldn’t necessarily be discounted as a potential option.
Nonetheless, as wide-format printers become more sophisticated with greater amounts of electronics and circuitry built into them, the more we expect from them. Most manufacturers work closely with their customers to make sure that the machines they’re producing do what they’re supposed to, with many including as much future proofing as possible.
What to expect in a good machine
- Solid build quality, no matter the cost price
- Strong rollers and media feed
- Safe circuitry
- Reliable printheads
- Ease of operation and logical layout
- Simple access to user maintained elements
- Clean ink accommodation and feed
- Rugged assembly and construction
- CE marking and REACH compliance in line with European directives
- Confident and comprehensive warranty and service contracts