Page 23 - Print21 July-Aug 2018 Magazine

Fespa
EFI’s Reggiani textile division has developed a new six colour pigment ink including binder with CMYK plus red and blue for its printers, mainly for home furnishing and fashion printing to materials with natural fibres. Giorgio Sala, EFI Reggiani’s ink application specialist, says: “We can eliminate the post treatment. In the drier we can fix the ink because the binder is inside the ink.” He adds: “The new ink is designed for Kyocera printheads, which all of our machines have, so we can use it with the existing machines.”
Agfa announced a new hybrid 3.3m wide printer, the Jeti Tauro H3300 LED, which takes boards up to 3.3
x 2.44m or roll media up to 600mm in diameter. There’s a choice of two inksets: the general-purpose Anuvia 1551, and Anuvia 1250 for absorbent media. Strangely, the company opted
“There’s a clear trend from this Fespa toward more industrialised printing for volume markets...”
to show a tiny Lego model rather than the actual printer!
Mutoh answered customer demands by showing off its first true flatbed printer, the PerformanceJet 2508UF, which takes boards up to 1250 x 2540 mm and can handle media up to 100 mm thick and up to 50kg/sqm in weight. The bed is split into different vacuum zones. This is a UV LED printer that can be configured with either two sets of CMYK or CMYK plus white and varnish. It uses four greyscale printheads but can be field-upgraded to six heads, for dual CMYK plus white and varnish.
Mutoh also showed a new 1.62m wide roll-to-roll device, the ValueJet 1638UR. Resolution is up to 1400 x 1400 dpi and it takes Mutoh’s new US11 UV LED ink that’s designed to work with a very wide range of substrates. It prints CMYK plus white and clear ink.
HP Latex reinvented, Ricoh ramps up
HP used the Fespa show to launch its first rigid latex printer, the R2000, complete with HP’s first latex white ink. The R2000 is a hybrid device, taking both roll-fed and
rigid media up to 2.5m wide, 50mm thick, and rolls up to 100kg. It has a wide platen, with 14 automatic
independent vacuum chambers to hold boards in place. It uses a belt system to pull the media through the printer but has an optical sensor that watches as the media advances and can correct the movement of that media. It can print at up to 88 sqm/ hr or 49 sqm/hr in six-pass mode.
The latex ink has been completely redesigned to work with rigid materials as well as flexibles. It
cures at a lower temperature which allows this printer to work with more heat-sensitive materials than HP’s previous latex printers. HP needed
to take out the scratch resistance built into its roll-fed inks to improve the jetting, so there’s a new Latex Overcoat to help protect prints.
HP has used the HDNA printheads from its PageWide presses, which have twice the number of nozzles; the extra row is used to recirculate the ink within the head. This is essential for printing with white ink, as the heavier particles can settle in the bottom of the tanks or clog the heads.
Ricoh is also working on a new latex printer, showing a prototype of a roll-fed model at Fespa, which should be available towards the end of this year. Unlike Ricoh’s previous latex printer, which was built on
a Mimaki chassis, this has been developed entirely by Ricoh. Angelo Mandelli, wide format product
Above: HP launched its R2000 hybrid, capable of printing to rigid materials.
Opposite: From left: Ashley Playford, national sales manager Fujifilm Australia,
with Graham Blackall, ANZ technical sales specialist, with the Fujifilm Acuity Ultra.
All images © Nessan Cleary
manager for Ricoh Europe, says that it can print at 40 sqm/hr in six pass mode on banner materials and at 25 sqm/hr for production quality on vinyl. It prints CMYK plus white for now, but Mandelli says that Ricoh will probably add orange and green to expand the colour gamut.
Paul Thompson, business development manager for DTG and visual display solutions at Ricoh Australia, says that much of the print industry, including large format, has become commoditised by focusing
on price, but Ricoh is concentrating on adding value. He points out
that Ricoh makes its own 1200dpi printheads and supplies heads to many other vendors, adding: “We
see that inkjet is the future and that if we offer it at the right quality and cost then it will make inroads in other industrial areas.”
In conclusion, there’s a clear trend from this Fespa toward more industrialised printing for volume markets. There’s more automation, such as automatic maintenance to improve productivity, while at the same time vendors have improved image quality. The show itself felt extremely busy, with over 20,000 visitors crammed into the halls over four days; proof that the market for wide format technology shows no sign of slowing down. 21
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