Features

There are a number of after market ink suppliers around but what are the risks and the benefits of using these inks? Nessan Cleary investigates. 

Ink is arguably the most important component of a printer, as well as potentially being the most expensive over the lifetime of the machine. Naturally the printer manufacturers insist that customers should buy their inks, pointing out that the original inks are designed specifically for the printer in question. But there is a healthy market in third party inks and using these can lead to considerable cost savings.

With the first of this Drupa launched machine now installed in the UK Nessan Cleary takes a closer look.

Screen used Drupa this spring to launch the Truepress W1632 UV. As the name implies, this is a UV flatbed wide-format printer, taking media up to 1.6 x 3.2m and up to 48mm thick. Bui Burke, sales director for Screen UK, is in no doubt that its key attribute is its high speed, saying: “Normally when you run a wide-format machine flat out at its top rated speed you quickly realise that the quality is not commercially acceptable. But this has 94m2/hr and really doesn’t seem to print differently at its maximum speed.”

Having spent most of my working life in the offset litho side of the print industry I am very aware of the history of colour control and the massive roll it played in the growth of four-colour print over previous decades. Since my migration to wide-format digital in recent years I watch with interest the growing importance of colour expertise in this sector too.

Since 2006, Océ’s range of Arizona UV flatbed printers have been bringing high-quality output to a range of industries and the new Océ Arizona 318 GL will bring that quality to an even greater audience.

When you’re trying to sell a product or a service, it’s tempting to talk figures straightway. Yet the respected innovation blogger Seth Godin (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ ) questions if this is the right approach.

In 1964, Barry Goldwater, a right-wing Republican Senator, ran for the American presidency under the campaign slogan: “In your heart you know he’s right”. 

Many consultants make the mistake of equating innovation with technology, the internet and owning a garage where you can experiment away the hours.  So it’s a pleasant change to discover a website like Wisepreneur (http://wisepreneur.com ) which aims to help innovators even if they don’t want to invent the next Facebook and focuses on challenges that are firmly grounded in everyday business life.

Recently tackled issues include how to stop that post-meeting drift (when an agreed plan of actions mysteriously drifts in the wrong direction), whether your company unconsciously stifles innovation (by creating a culture where new ideas are stifled by meetings where people say things like “We’ve tried that”, “Management won’t go for it”, etc) and, in an especially timely post, whether you need to do an inventory of your unspoken assumptions and decide which ones should be discarded.

The difficulty is that many of the assumptions that need challenging are the ones that, in management’s view, made the company successful in the first place. But the history of business is full of companies whose strengths became weaknesses where success, ultimately, bred failure. Holly Green, CEO of The Human Factor (a corny name for a consultancy but it doesn’t make her insights less valid) suggests every company could usefully ask these core questions:

• What has changed with our customers, the market, the industry and the world
• What assumptions do we still make even though some of us suspect they’re no longer true?
•  What processes do we hold onto simply because “we’ve always done it that way?”
•  What new ideas/processes/services have we thought of recently but never progressed because they “would never work”? Has anything changed since we made that call?

Phil Thompson, head of BPIF Business, lists the top security controls for information security management. 

Richard Moore is print and paper industry lead at Proskills, which has undergone significant changes this summer.

Proskills ceased to be Sector Skills Council (SSC) at the end of last month, a move that followed an earlier restructure and the departure of chief executive Terry Watts in the spring. Since then we’ve also seen the departure of interim CEO Tom Bowtell. So just what is the new look Proskills all about and what’s it doing for print?

By being clever with how it works with media Ltd Limited has carved out a niche for creating stunning graphics that invite clients to think outside the box.

When it comes to innovative use of substrates, one print company really stands out. Ltd Limited, based in the east of London, works with materials from around the world, often combining and layering media to create stunning effects. It's a formula that obviously works as the company has just celebrated its tenth anniversary.

So says Steve Malkin, founder and CEO of Planet Positive on the topic of sustainability, where he believes the print sector can still take a lead.

The wide-format industry isn’t known for printing to environmentally friendly media, but there are now a number of more sustainable substrates around.

There's a lot of talk about environmentally friendly printing, but not so much in the wide-format sector because of the nature of the substrates typically in use. However, it's striking that many of the newer materials coming to market are being hailed as more sustainable offerings for this arena.