Fespa 2013 has departed London and it’s time to assess what we have learned before the dust settles. Nessan Cleary reports.
Even though this year’s Fespa show took place in London, it remained undeniably a European show, thanks to the sheer number of overseas visitors. It was busy, with most visitors having done their homework and knowing exactly what they had come to see. And there was plenty to see, with most stands crammed with equipment and visitors alike.
At first glance, most of the new kit can be seen as evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Yet, there’s clearly been a move toward better image quality at higher speeds and ultimately this is going to have a huge impact on the way that the large-format market is segmented.
Currently there’s a choice between good image quality, at relatively low speeds, or high throughput with lower image quality. If you’ve wanted both high image quality and high throughput then you’ve had to buy several machines.
But at Fespa there were a number of big flatbeds aimed firmly at the high production end of the market, while producing quite good image quality. Take HP FB10000, a large production flatbed printer capable of printing up to 625m2/hr in its production mode, though this drops to 407m2/hr if you aim for higher image quality. HP says that it is hoping to compete directly with screen and offset presses.
It’s built on a similar chassis to the FB7600 and takes boards and flexible sheets up to 1.6 x 3.2m. It appears to use the same auto loading system but there’s no option to upgrade the older printers to the FB10000.
The new printer uses a new HDR printhead, which is the next generation of Scitex’s drop on demand X2 head. Eviator Halevi, director of technology for HP Scitex, says: “We have squeezed in 50% more nozzles but it has the same form factor.” It produces a fixed 15 picolitre droplet, a marked improvement over the FB7600’s 42 picolitre drops. HP has also added a form of greyscaling by firing several drops in quick succession and having them merge in flight before they reach the substrate. This produces three different drop sizes of 15, 30 and 45 picolitres.
There’s a new generation of UV inks, HDR240, comprising a six-colour inkset with CMYK plus light cyan and light magenta. Swanline Print, which produces packaging and point of sale displays, has become the first UK company to buy an FB1000.
HP also showed off its new Latex 3000, as detailed in last month’s issue. Essentially it’s a mid-production roll-to-roll printer capable of 180m2/hr in billboard mode, or a more realistic 77m2/hr for indoor quality. It has 1200dpi resolution, with six colours plus a primer. PressOn, based in Rochester, will be the first customer worldwide.
EFI used Fespa to launch the HS 100 Pro, first seen as an early beta at last year’s Drupa show. It’s a 3.2m wide UV hybrid printer which can produce up to 100 boards per hour, though 70 is a more reasonable figure to achieve sellable quality. It uses LEDs, with a two-stage curing process known as pin and cure. The use of LED curing enables it to handle a wider range of materials.
EFI showed off a new UV ink that is capable of being thermoformed without the colours suffering, and which can also be routed without chipping or cracking. The GS-TF inks work with a range of substrates including PETG, acrylics, polycarbonates, polystyrenes and PVC. The inkset includes eight colours plus white and can be used with the GS2000 and GS3250 printers.
EFI also demonstrated its SmartSign analytics system. Essentially this uses a tiny webcam hidden in a poster to analyse how people view that sign. It doesn’t record anyone’s picture, just the metadata about them. It can capture details such as the gender and age range of the person, as well as the amount of time they spend looking at the sign, and how many people walk past, giving genuine feedback about the effectiveness of a campaign at a given location.
Durst showed off its new Rho 1012 UV flatbed. This has a 12 picolitre drop size and can produce up to 490m2/hr at 1000dpi. It uses Durst’s Variodrop greyscaling technology, which Durst claims allows for up to 25% more productivity.
Fujifilm had the spotlight focussed on the latest version of the Inca Onset flatbeds. The Q40i is based on the existing Onset platform, and can print onto media up to 3.14m x 1.6m and up to 50mm thick. It’s not as fast as the S-series but the image quality is markedly better largely thanks to the use of Dimatix QS10 printheads, which deliver a 10 picolitre drop size, resulting in 1200dpi apparent resolution. Productivity is said to be up to 310m2/hr. It’s available in four and six colour versions and priced at around £900,000.
Fujifilm provided an interesting comparison with the same image printed on a Q40i, a Lambda and an Epson aqueous ink printer. As you would expect, the Lambda print was by far the best with much better density and much deeper colours. The Epson print was marginally better, but as Tudor Morgan, marketing manager for Fujifilm Speciality Graphics, pointed out, the Q40i print was much cheaper and faster to make with very little loss of detail.
Inca Digital demonstrated a thought provoking new flatbed printer. It’s a brand new platform, jointly developed by Inca and its parent company Screen. It uses Dimatix Polaris printheads, which have a fixed 15 picolitre drop size. It takes media up to 3.2 x 1.6m and up to 50mm thick and can produce fairly reasonable image quality at a rate of around 84m2/hr. It uses CMYK plus light cyan and light magenta and white and can be supplied with four, six or eight channels.
It’s being sold by Screen as the Truepress W3200UV, and by Fujifilm as the Avoset with both vendors claiming to be using different inks. It should be available by October and cost around £250,000.
Inktec introduced its new Jetrix KX5, a 2.3 x 1.3m UV flatbed. This is essentially an updated version of the 2513, now using Konica Minolta 1024 printheads giving it 1440 x 720dpi resolution. The printer can reach speeds of up to 30m2/hr. The printer uses a new UV ink that Inktec claims will give strong adhesion to many substrates, such as glass, acrylic and metal, without the need for a primer. It can also be printed onto softer substrates, like polypropylene, and then folded without cracking. The base machine is £90,000. There’s a roll-to-roll option that fits onto the front of the bed, and now takes media up to 2.2m wide, and which adds another £10,000 to the price.
From Canon came a new variation to its Arizona UV flatbed range with the 600 series. There are four models, the four-colour 640 GT and XT, and the six-colour 660 GT and XT, with the XT models having a larger 2.5 x 3m bed size. The 660 models can be configured to have white ink or varnish, or with extra cyan and magenta inks to increase the throughput.
Canon also showed off the ColorWave 900, which was first seen at last year’s Drupa as a prototype code named Project Velocity. It uses a Memjet printhead and has the same drawer system found on Océ’s ColorWave 600/650 CAD printers, which hold six rolls of media in total.
New from Xerox was its Memjet-based printer, the IJP 2000, which was first previewed at Drupa. As with all current wide-format Memjet printers, this has a print width of 106.7cm and maximum resolution of 1600 x 1600dpi. It can produce print at around 420m2/hr.
Mimaki launched its UJV500 roll-to-roll UV printer that uses LED curing. It features a new inkset, LUS200UV, that has been jointly developed with 3M to qualify for the MCS warranty for outdoor use. There will be a new white ink available for this around September this year.
Mimaki also demonstrated its JV400-SUV, seen at last year’s show as a prototype but now commercially available. This is based on the proven JV400 platform but uses a mixture of solvent and UV-curable inks. Essentially, it uses solvent to key to the media, meaning that the pigment has better adhesion to a broader range of media than with UV alone. It also has the high gloss finish and bright colours associated with solvent prints. The curing gives it a degree of scratch and weather resistance. The prints are said to be immediately ready for finishing with no time needed for out-gassing. It’s a four-colour machine capable of printing at 18m2/hr in draft mode. It’s available in 1.3m and 1.6m wide versions.
Mimaki also announced new inks for its latex printers, which now includes orange and green and a higher density black.
Seiko showed a new version of its ColorPainter solvent printers. The M64S will be a direct competitor to both the SUV and latex printers. It can produce 33m2/hr, with the prints being touch dry as they exit the printer.
Bordeaux demonstrated a new latex ink, Eden LX, designed for converting solvent printers using Epson DX printheads into latex printers. Marketing manager Galit Beck says that these inks are up to 50% more cost effective than OEM ecosolvent inks.
Production workflows
GMG has updated its ProductionSuite workflow to v2. This includes a revamped SmartProfiler module, said to be easier to use largely due to a new automatic rendering intent for building profiles. There’s also a new Layout feature which supports true shape nesting as well as print and cut.
There’s also a new entry-level version, the Focus edition, which will only work with a single printer, which would rather seem to undermine the point of a workflow to centralise the management of several devices.
Of the three wide-format workflows that were launched at the last Fespa, GMG seems to have had the most success in the UK with its three installations, which hardly seems worth getting excited about.
Will Hearn, a sales executive with GMG, says that it’s difficult to sell a Rip to people who already have one and so the strategy now is to partner with printer vendors to bundle the workflow with a range of printers. To this end ProductionSuite is already included as an option with several printers including the new HP FB10000 and GMG is expecting to have up to 50 new users this year.
Agfa launched its Asanti workflow for wide-format. It’s based on Agfa’s Apogee workflow, which has been a proven performer in commercial offset printing, though Andrew Grant, Agfa’s director of software, stresses that it has a completely new, simplified interface. It does not include a Rip, relying on the dedicated Rip supplied with each printer to carry out screening. But Asanti does take care of the colour management and preflighting, and passes a PDF to the Rip. It also includes cloud-based Web-to-print called Asanti Storefront.
In some ways it seems that using software to improve efficiency would be an easy sell. After all, there’s little point in investing in new printers to improve throughput if you can’t also process the jobs upfront and yet it still feels as if the wide format market isn’t quite ready for automated workflows just yet.
Grant acknowledges that: “We know that there are some customers that are ready to think beyond the small amount of workflow that they have today.” He adds: “The workflow is moving more towards being about maintaining the flow of information and that’s what we have experience in.”
Finally, there were quite a number of textile printers at Fespa, which we will cover in next month’s issue as part of a more detailed look at the soft signage and decorative market.