Page 28 - Print21 Jan-Feb 2020

Wide Format Finishing
A cut above
Wide-format printers have an important consideration beyond putting ink on a substrate:
how to then turn that
printed substrate into a
cut and finished product. Fortunately, a variety of automated cutting tables
are out there to suit their needs, as Jake Nelson reports.
With more automation than ever, digital flatbed cutting tables
just keep getting smarter, and are a boon for wide- format printers seeking to take manual touchpoints out of their finishing processes. Traditional commercial printers, too, now have a range of finishing options for their forays into the burgeoning wide- format sector.
According to Morgan Quinn, national sales manager for large format at Quadient (formerly Neopost), printers looking to invest in a large-format cutter should consider more than just their immediate requirements.
“I think it depends on what you want to produce today and what you’re planning to produce in the future. You need to obviously cover off your existing applications, but then you also need to understand what future applications you are looking at adding, and if this machine will have the capabilities to
add that option on down the line,” he says.
Manufacturers such as Aristo, Canon, Esko, and Zünd are all known for producing quality cutters, and each has brought something new to the table – or tables – in the past 12 months.
Aristo builds bigger
Quadient distributes the German- made Aristo cutting tables in Australia. According to Quinn, the rugged engineering of Aristo tables means they can be built larger than their competitors.
“Cutting tables in general are undergoing huge advancements, but Aristo has a good name in the large width machines. It does lots of work in 3.2-metre and five-metre width solutions – that’s where it really has great success.
“Not too many manufacturers go to seven-metre-long, five-metre-wide machines – the reason Aristo can do that is because of the robustness of the machines themselves. It’s solid German engineering,” he says.
Aristo is also in the process of launching an LC laser cutting head for textiles after it was unveiled at Fespa in May last year; according to Quinn, it can help customers into the growing textile market.
“This option can be retrofitted to existing cutters as well as new machines – with the growth in textiles, this is a great solution for finishing of textile-based materials like flags and so on,” he says.
Quinn estimates that between 50 and 75 Aristo cutting tables
are installed
around Australia,
and says customers are pleased with their reliability.
“We have customers who have been running the same machines for more than 10 years, so they’re very happy with the quality,” he said.
Aristo tables are available in the Aristomat TL, GL, and LFC series from Quadient.
Canon makes a good match
Canon Production Printing – formerly Océ – sells the ProCut range of tables, which according to Garry Muratore, product manager for graphic arts, marries robust Zünd hardware with Canon proprietary software to produce an end-to-end workflow solution.
“Canon ProCut tables are manufactured by Zünd, which
is known for quality built Swiss products. What sets ProCut apart from other tables is the purpose designed ProCut software that has been developed by Océ to integrate with our range of Arizona and Colorado printers.
“Canon ProCut software stands alone by offering a single, fully- integrated digital workflow from
cut data preparation to intelligent nesting and to printing and cutting. It is an ideal solution for display graphic digital print providers willing to automate their production
28 Print21 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020