Hardware - Industrial Print

One of the USA's leading, high-end commercial graphics communications companies, Sandy Alexander Inc., has bought another Durst RHO UV inkjet printer - the 5-metre-wide 500R for soft wide and superwide format printing applications. With the purchase of its 4th Durst UV Inkjet digital printer, Sandy Alexander continues to expand its presence in the US$10 billion Out-of-Home market.

Mike Graff, President and CEO of Sandy Alexander said, "Our explosive growth in the wide & grand format and the retail visual merchandising business has been due to our industry leading colour expertise. With the advanced colour management workflow available with our printers, we can provide the highest colour consistency and brand equity for our clients across a multitude of deliverables –from the smallest postcard to stadium wraps, all under one roof...and in today's marketplace, clients are demanding brand consistency on a global basis."

Graff also pointed out that the environmental credentials of the Durst printers make an excellent complement to Sandy Alexander's environmental leading position in the industry including a carbon neutral wide and superwide format facility and Sandy's powering of its operations with 100% wind energy.

In addition, Mike said, "With the most advanced colour management, most effective and economical large-format imagers ever developed, combined with our cutting edge environmental position, we have molded Sandy Alexander into the unquestioned leader in the Grand Format and Retail Visual Merchandising marketplace."

The RHO 500R prints six-colour, 600-dpi images on a wide variety of roll media at speeds up to 4,300 s.f/hr. It also is able to print three independent images from three separate job queues at the same time to achieve efficiency and handle a broader range of applications. The printer operates unattended, uses less ink than a comparable superwide platform, and minimises operational cost due to its high productivity, advanced workflow and remarkable versatility.

HP today announced the printers to be shown on the Laboratoria Reklamnuh Technologiy (LRT) stand (FE100) at Reklama, 27 - 30 September, 2011, at Expocentr' Krasnaya Presnya Fairgrounds, Moscow.

Exhibiting in conjunction with its partner, LRT, HP's products on show will demonstrate the application versatility and flexibility offered to wide format graphics print service providers for producing signage for the advertising industry. HP printers are designed to increase the revenue-enhancing opportunities for print businesses while offering end-users high print quality and fast-turnaround times across a wider spectrum of applications.

At GRAPH EXPO 2011 EFI's suite of offerings will be on display in booth 2000 (11-14 Sept, Chicago's McCormick Place) and in partner booths, including Canon U.S.A., Heidelberg, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Ricoh Americas Corporation, Xerox Corporation and others.

The newest versions of EFI products will be featured, including business process automation and Web-to-Print software; the next-generation Fiery® digital print platform; EFI mobile print products; an EFI VUTEk® superwide digital inkjet printer; an EFI Rastek™ UV wide format printer; and an EFI Jetrion® industrial inkjet printing system. As a first-time service, EFI will allow show attendees to print emails and documents for free from their smart phones to a Fiery-driven printer. (Visitors should go to booth 2000 for details.)

The Digital Workflow Experience will be a highlight of the EFI booth, featuring an integrated, automated workflow from submission to output. The demonstration follows a job from EFI Digital StoreFront® web-to-print, to both EFI Pace™ and EFI Monarch print MIS systems, and then to either a Fiery XF proServer production RIP for output on the VUTEk GS2000 printer, or to a Fiery System 10 server for output on a digital production printer.

"GRAPH EXPO is a great opportunity for print providers of all sizes and specialities to learn about the latest technology available to help them grow, diversify or streamline their operations," said Guy Gecht, EFI CEO. "In the continued uncertain economic climate, EFI remains focused on the areas of print where the opportunities for profitable growth are real and significant. We look forward to demonstrating first-hand how our innovative, integrated solutions can help customers become successful in these growth areas."

In its booth and partner booths, EFI will run more than 20 Fiery products, demonstrating once again that Fiery technology is the industry's most popular digital print workflow.

In the EFI booth, the company will highlight its diverse portfolio and strong integration between solutions by displaying its products around vertical markets that match customers' business needs, divided into six segments: On Demand, Commercial Printing, In-Plant/CRD, Publishing/Mailing, Packaging/Labelling and Mobile Computing. While many EFI products address customer requirements in multiple verticals, here's what visitors can expect to see in each area of the booth:

On Demand
For the first time at an industry event, GRAPH EXPO attendees will see the recently launched Fiery System 10 platform driving digital print production engines.

Also shown for the first time is a preview version of Fiery Dashboard, a cloud-based information collection and analysis tool that gives print production managers access to digital print engine data to help them make proactive business decisions. Information is gathered for all Fiery-driven engines, giving shops a view to compare engine use and overall productivity. Fiery Dashboard is accessed via a web browser, making it an information service accessible from anywhere at any time.

In this section, EFI will also demonstrate the popular EFI PrintSmith™ and EFI Pace MIS systems, and the latest version of EFI Digital StoreFront.

Commercial Printing
This area of the booth will be focused on job submission with EFI Digital StoreFront and on business process automation with EFI PrintSmith and EFI Monarch. Fiery System 10 is also here, which includes the newest version of the job management tool Fiery Command WorkStation®.

In-Plant/CRD
In this part of the booth, attendees will receive hands-on demos of EFI Digital StoreFront, EFI PrintSmith, EFI Pace, and the Fiery Central and MicroPress® production workflow tools.

Publishing/Mailing
Here visitors will see EFI Monarch, EFI Auto-Count® direct machine interface solution, EFI PrintFlow® scheduling, and the EFI PrintStream fulfilment module.

Packaging/Labeling
GRAPH EXPO attendees will learn about EFI packaging and labelling offerings, with an EFI Radius to Fiery XF to Jetrion 4830 workflow demo.

Mobile Computing
This area of the EFI booth will highlight EFI PrintMe®, a real-time cloud printing solution, including an Entrac MiniNet (from recently acquired Entrac Technologies), a self service and payment print terminal that offers PrintMe.

And more...
•    Visitors can see the powerful VUTEk GS2000 superwide format UV inkjet printer, part of the Digital Workflow Experience, and the Rastek H652 UV hybrid printer.
•    The latest version of Fiery Color Profiler Suite will be shown, with enhanced device link functionality including full support for the i1 automation table and new monitor profiling tools. It provides all of these features via a simple wizard workflow, so that any operator can make custom profiles successfully and achieve and maintain the best colour match.
•    EFI will demonstrate Fiery technology integrated to prepress workflow solutions such as Agfa Apogee and Kodak Prinergy.
•    Inkjet Printing Applications will also be on display, including Colorproof™ XF, EFI eXpress, and the unique Web Control Center. Epson and Caddon devices are in the booth too.

Inca Digital has doubled its Onset manufacturing volume at its Cambridge facility in the UK to meet a considerable boost in demand for this powerful series of UV flatbed wide-format digital inkjet printers.This follows the successful launch of the original Inca Onset in 2007, the Onset S20 in 2008 and high interest in the Onset S40 launched earlier this year.

The rise in the number of companies needing to invest in high-performance equipment to meet increased demand from their customers has resulted in a high volume of orders for Onsets over the last year from across Europe and the Americas.  In addition, many companies are now investing in second and third machines, either adding multiple S20s or adding an S20 or S40 alongside an Inca Onset as they start to switch to total digital print production and away from screen and large-format litho printing.

“The Inca Onset Series with automation redefines wide-format performance levels, providing an ideal, fast production platform and ticking all the boxes for companies who need to produce short-run, variable and static display graphics on a wide range of materials very quickly and efficiently,” says Dr Linda Bell, CEO, Inca Digital. “The success of the Onset products worldwide over the past three years has raised the quality bar in digitally printed graphics and demonstrated the considerable market for fast turnaround, quality display graphics on a wide range of materials and at a competitive price.  We are actively recruiting to further increase staffing levels by 20 per cent across the board and have worked hard with our suppliers to add the capacity to respond to the higher demand.”

Inca Digital Onset S20
Fujifilm distributes Inca’s ultra-fast printers exclusively around the world and supplies the patented Uvijet inks that have been specifically formulated to maximise the benefits of Inca’s engineering expertise and deliver groundbreaking quality.  The flagship, super-high productivity Inca Onset prints at 750sqm/hr (8,073 sqft/hr), the Inca Onset S40 at up to 470 sqm/hr (5,059 sq ft/hr) and the Inca Onset S20 at 310 sqm/hr (3,340 sqft/hr).  With a choice of productivity, automation, ink colour options and controllable satin and gloss levels, 18 different Onset configurations are available. This enables companies to pick the right model, at the best price, performance and, therefore, return on investment (ROI) for their business and provide room for growth.

Go to www.incadigital.com to see full details. To take the Onset Challenge go to www.onsetchallenge.com

HP today announced that Astron Group, of Prague, Czech Republic, has added its third HP Scitex TJ8350 Press to meet customer demand and to attract more international brand business.

Established as a prepress and data processing company in 1994, Astron Group has evolved to become one of the largest providers of large and wide format print in the region. Today, with more than 200 employees, and a turnover of €15 million the company, offers the production of digital, digital large format and conventional offset printing services for international corporations and agencies in Central and Eastern Europe.

Astron Group bought is first HP Scitex TJ8300 Press in 2007 and a year later added a second press. These presses, an HP Scitex XL1500 Printer and an HP Scitex XL1200 Printer, along with a growing number of UV curable and dye-based digital printers enabled Astron to become one of the largest producers of large format advertising in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Earlier this year in July, when Astron installed a third TJ press, a TJ8350, it also upgraded the other two presses to HP Scitex TJ8350 Press standards and became the only company in Europe to have three TJ8350 presses under one roof.

"Our decision to buy the third HP Scitex TJ press was based on our overall strategy of re-investing in technologies that have been successful for us, which the first two presses have been," said Tomas Novak, owner, Astron Group. "In addition to increasing our capacity, the additional press also gives us the level of back-up that is required by our agency customers and the national and international brands. Without the capabilities to assure the required short turnaround times, winning such orders is difficult, if not impossible."

Astron Group provides a complete service to its customers and has comprehensive automated finishing capabilities and also offers installation services for all its signage.

"As our relationships with customers grew, so did our offering," continued Novak. "In addition to our large format work, we also provide prepress data preparation, DTP, design and artwork preparation and even publishing, using our traditional offset press. This was an interesting development as we began with digital printing, but as we attracted customers, saw the opportunity to offer traditional offset printing as well."

The ability to use pigmented inks on the presses is another feature that makes them versatile and suited for use for international brand work. In addition to the big brands, customers and end-users include retail chains, telecommunications companies, insurance companies, banks and car importers - all of which have a requirement for consistent, high-quality print.

"The benefits of the HP Scitex TJ8350 Presses enable us to process more jobs during peak periods while during 'normal' periods we can shorten lead times, deliver to tight deadlines and meet our customers' quality expectations," concluded Marek Nemec, publishing and offset director.

For further information about the Astron Group, please visit www.astron.cz

More information is available at www.youtube.com/hpgraphicarts or follow HP on www.twitter.com/hpgraphicarts

As a first-time exhibitor, and endorsing its experience in wide-format digital textile solutions, EFI(TM) is participating at ITMA (Barcelona, Spain, 22-29 Sept) with the VUTEk TX3250r fabric printing system designed for industrial and display applications. This innovative dye sublimation printer has a maximum  width of 3.2m and incorporates many of the benefits and attributes of the company's world-leading inkjet solutions.

Launched to great acclaim in the spring of this year, EFI's VUTEk TX3250r will be demonstrated in a live production environment at ITMA, complemented by a Klieverik calender. The TX3250r is a new wide-format production solution that has evolved from the first industrial inkjet textile system, the VUTEk FabriVu, introduced by the company in 2002. Advances made in this market sector have now resulted in an innovative, versatile fabric printer that marries the combination of excellent quality with industrial performance for high-margin applications.

Ideal for display producers as well as industrial sectors, the VUTEk TX3250r can be used to print direct to textile or indirect to transfer paper to produce samples
and short-runs, home and commercial décor such as wall coverings and furnishings, as well as a vast range of soft signage, banner and flag applications. Its appeal
also lies in generating more environmentally aware production practices in the retail and point-of-sale areas, along with easier logistics and lighter weight applications.

Designed to be used with Hilord's sublimation dyes, the VUTEk TX3250r outputs high quality, brilliant colours with excellent durability across a wide variety of
polyester-based fabrics. Integration with EFI's production software results in a precise, fully  colour-managed workflow, resulting in a complete, easy-to-use solution on a strong and powerful platform.

Managing director and owner of Faber France, Patrice Verley, comments, "We already use two VUTEk FabriVu machines on a day-to-day basis and their reliability and output quality have been excellent. The new VUTEk TX3250r is faster and incorporates higher resolution, so it was an easy choice for us when we needed to invest in additional printing capacity for our growing textile production business."

Wollux is one of Europe's largest textile printing companies. Based in Mouscron, Belgium, their experience with VUTEk technology goes back to 1999. "We produce between 500,000 and 750,000 sq m of digitally printed textile per year- mostly flags, banners and POP decoration," said CEO Edwin Birnbaum. "When EFI showed us the speed gains and the image and colour quality offered by their new VUTEk TX3250r, we decided to be the first to offer these benefits to our customers.  The machine has been working double shifts since we installed it."

The growing awareness of wide-format digital textile printing led EFI to decide to exhibit at this year's ITMA exhibition in Barcelona. "Although the graphic arts
and display sectors know EFI and its solutions, our increasing presence in the fabric arena is attracting specialist customers. We want to address this by participating at this important, dedicated textile event," explains Emmanuel Swolfs, International Field Marketing Manager for EFI VUTEk. "There has been increased interest in the digital textile sector and this specialist solution will appeal to new and existing users of dye sublimation technology. ITMA gives EFI the ideal platform for demonstrating the VUTEk TX3250r to a dedicated audience."

The new VUTEk TX3250r complements EFI's diverse portfolio of wide- and narrow-format digital inkjet systems, which utilise UV-curable ink, including VUTEk grand format inkjet printers, Rastek(TM) wide-format inkjet printers and Jetrion® industrial  inkjet printers, along with the company's software solutions for colour-managed workflow, its Fieryâ XF RIP, plus specialist options for full management across all print disciplines.