The 25th Sign & Digital UK show attracted a healthy crop of visitors to see significant developments in the wide format equipment market. By Simon Eccles.
This year’s Sign & Digital UK marked the 25 anniversary of the exhibition. Its original name was Sign UK, at a time when screen process dominated sign printing and digital mostly meant computer-controlled vinyl cutters. Early wide format digital printers used electrostatic drums with liquid toners, a process that has largely been replaced by inkjet except for some plan printers. However, it looks as if Miyakoshi and Ryobi are planning to revive it for fast commercial production presses: see news, page 3.
Celebrating the show’s quarter century, the show’s organiser Faversham House set up a gallery of photographs in the ‘Café 25’ area, plus a few vintage machines, showing that a once state-of-the-art computer looks like something out of the ark after 20 years.
This year’s show, running over three days at the NEC near Birmingham, attracted a healthy crop of visitors: some 6264 (subject to audit). Exhibitors seemed happy with the turnout: we heard none of the usual grumbles about numbers that normally accompany any exhibition. As in other recent years, the UK show came a few weeks after the larger pan-European Fespa Digital event, held in Barcelona this year. Many of the new digital announcements had already been made in Spain, but Sign & Digital represented the first chance for many UK printers to see them.
AG/CAD, developer of Kasemake cutting tables and associated software, is now the UK distributor for the Korean DYSS digital finishing tables. It had an X7 model at the show. The company has developed new software to go with the table’s camera vision registration system, called K-Cut Vision. All DYSS machines now use this.
Agfa Graphics had a couple of new models in its ever growing Anapurna M-series flatbed UV inkjets. It’s being selling these well lately, with five recent sales of the 2 x 3 metre M2050 roll/flatbed hybrids into the south east for instance. At the show, Victoria Litho signed up to buy one of the new M2540 FB dedicated six colour flatbed models, being shown for the first time in the UK. These have a fixed, vacuum bed measuring 1.54 x 2.56 metres and a travelling head carriage, where hybrid M models have a fixed carriage with a moving belt media transport: a fixed bed is less flexible but has greater registration accuracy. Also new was the M4f, a £55,000 entry level hybrid with CMYK inks. Pay a bit more and you can get the Mw model with white ink too. Also shown, on the GPT stand, was an M1600 which runs twice as fast as the Mw.
Clarity Systems showed its Clarity Pro MIS, originally developed for signage printers but suited to any digital print work. Star of its stand was the new Delivery Module which organises and tracks deliveries and on-site signage erection work, in conjunction with the Proof of Delivery iPhone app for remote work. See page 17 for details. Colour Confidence is primarily a colour management systems supplier and consultant, but last year it took on the distributorship for Neolt, and Italian maker of large format UV printers and roll-fed cutters, appearing for the first time with these at Sign & Digital UK 2011. This year it had a stand with only a Neolt cutter, but a more extensive selection of its colour management kit. ‘We noticed last year that many sign printers are four or five years behind the times with colour management,’ said Peter Holland, Government business development manager. He says that the market is realising the need for better colour control as inkjets become more capable and expectations from signage customers are rising.
Drytac, the lamination film and application machinery specialist, introduced new VisiPrint film. This is a directly printable self adhesive window film: you print in reverse on the back surface, and peel the ‘backing’ from the front to apply it to glass. Previously Drytac’s window film was a double sided adhesive laminate that had to be applied to front-printed clear film. VisiPrint is currently for UV printers but a universal version for any process is on the way.
Epson has decided that all its future professional printers will be called SureColor, not Stylus Pro, though existing models will keep their current names. Each model number will have a prefix: S for Sign, T for technical (CAD, plans etc) and P for photographic.
The first SureColor to hit the market is the SCS-3060, a new light solvent 1.6 metre printer priced as an entry level four colour model at £11,995, currently with a ‘limited period’ cashback offer of £895. It introduces new UltraChrome GS2 inks, which are non hazardous and odour free, but have a respectable outdoor life.
This printer costs far less than the original Epson solvent printer, the eight colour GS6000, which remains available at about £18,000. The SCS-3060 is also faster than the GS6000 at 24.9 m2 per hour ‘at a usable quality.’ The printer is intended for one person operation, with handling aids for loading large rolls including a jacking system. This class and price of solvent printers are currently dominated by Mimaki, Mutoh and Roland DG.
Martin Johns, Epson UK’s business manager, says: ‘Our objective is a 45% market share within three years,’ he says. The GS6000 now has a borderless printing kit option, to take media from 300 mm to 1590 mm, to produce digital wallpaper and large window graphics.
GMG is normally associated with colour management, but it now combines this into workflow systems too. At the show it was demonstrating Production Suite, a workflow for wide format work that combines design and colour management features, with support for variable data. Its automatic job layouts for the most efficient use of print and media areas include the Super Tile tool for irregular applications such as murals with cutouts for doors and windows. The workflow is based on PrintFactory by Aurelon, a company that GMG bought recently. See page 12 for more details. Esko demonstrated one of its Kongsberg digital cutting and creasing tables, the i-XP 24 model with i-cut Vision Pro camera based registration. New for the show was i-cut Automate, past of its Suite 12 modular workflow but intended specifically for wide format work taking in digital finishing. It includes hot folder custom workflows based on Esko’s Odystar workflow, with preflighting, colour management, design tools and tools for setting up layouts with associated cutting and creasing channels. See page 12 for more details.
Fujifilm was promoting the printers that its sells under its own name, plus its Euromedia wide format sales operation, which handles consumables as well as selling the printers. Apart from printed samples of a range of media, it was demonstrating its latest Acuity LED 1600 hybrid printer, which was announced last year. It’s a 1.6 metre wide model with UV cured inks and up to eight colours, printing at up to 20 m2 per hour. Also demonstrated was the new XMF PrintCentre Cloud based web to print system.
HP is big in large format and supplies a wide range of printers with different configurations and ink types. At the show it had three of the five Latex ink printers in its current range. One was the latest 1.55 metre Designjet L26500, a replacement for the L25500 which forms the entry level to the Latex ink process and costs around £15,000. It offers six colours and a 1200 x 1200 dpi resolution. Latex ink is non-hazardous and non-odorous and the latest formulation is said to give denser blacks and a longer outdoor life. Showing off its capabilities, HP demonstrated the wrapping of a Smart car using Latex printed media. It’s also suited to textile printing — the 1.55 metre width (ie 61 inches) is a common textile size.
The second Latex printer using the new inks was the 2.5 metre Designjet L28500, with heavy duty feed and takeup for 120 kg banner rolls. A third Latex model shown was a 3.2 metre LX850 from the HP Scitex industrial range. Another HP Scitex model demonstrated was the FB500, a 1.63 metre UV hybrid for rolls and sheets.
KIP’s stand demonstrated its large format toner printer, the C8700. This unusual alternative to inkjet can run 50% faster than its predecessor, the Kip Color 80, which itself was impressively fast. Some 350 of these were sold in Europe from 2009. The new C8700 can print 288 A0 sheets per hour, 516 A1s, or 692 A2s. It may not seem much to offset printers, but these are all-digital sheets with variable data if you want it, and no setup times.
Costs per copy are low at about £1.28 for a colour A0 sheet with full image coverage or about 58p for 30% coverage, while there’s a separate, lower click rate for black-only printing. KIP UK’s marketing manager Dick Casey says this is less than many black-only printers. Mimaki’s UK distributor Hybrid Services had one of the larger stands. One of the most significant launches was Mimaki’s own Latex ink printer, the JV400 LX, in 1.3 and 1.6 metre widths. The water based ink is apparently similar to HP’s Latex ink and similar claims are made for its eco-friendly, non-toxic and non-odorous nature, plus a decent outdoor life for the print. The configurations available are either six colours plus 2 x white or 2 x CMYK. So far HP does not offer a white Latex ink.
Also on the stand, and on several dealers’ stands, were the two versions of the UJF-3042 compact A3 flatbed inkjet. The base model is the UJF-3042FX with LED curing, a vacuum bed and six colour flexible inks. This takes objects up to 50 mm thick and costs £22,995. The new UJF-3042HG takes objects up to 150 mm thick on its non-vacuum bed. It also has eight ink channels. Price is £29,995.
Mutoh has streamlined its range following its decision to close its European factory in Ostend and to concentrate all manufacture in Japan. At Sign & Digital UK it introduced two new 1.65 metre models in its ValueJet range: the VJ-1638 for sign and display work using Eco Ultra light solvent inks; and the VJ-1638W for dye sublimation transfer textile work. These are the first ValueJets to feature a new staggered dual head setup for higher speeds. The ValueJet 1638 offers ‘sellable quality’ running at up to 36 m2 per hour with 720 x 720 dpi.
It follows another pair of models introduced at the end of last year: the 1.3 metre VJ-1324 and 1.6 metre VJ-1624. These use the same new wide print heads but don’t have the staggered arrangement.
Océ claims to have 43% of the market for UV flatbeds with its Arizona family and this year was showings a new entry level to the range, the 318 GL. Pricing starts at £75,000. The company also owns RIP developer Onyx and showed the latest Thrive workflow software, a scalable system based on Adobe PDF Print Engine (APPE) technology.
Roland DG printers appeared on plenty of other stands beside its own, including its largest dealer Printmax. New for the show was a modification of the VersaCAMM VS series of EcoSol ink printers, which were launched in 2010 with the ability to print metallic silver as well as white. Not everyone needs metallic so there’s now an option to print 2x white instead, which gives higher density.
The company’s recently launched desktop sized printers also featured around the show. The BN-20 is a compact 17 inch wide EcoSol print and cut model with six colours plus silver or (a new option) white. It costs £5499. The LEF-12 is a small UV flatbed printer that can take objects up to 100 mm high on a 280 x 305 mm bed. It costs £20,499, a little less than the base Mimaki UJF-3042FX which has a larger A3 bed but only takes 50 mm high objects. Roland DG says that the LEF-12 also has recirculation for white ink, fast Ethernet for continuous data downloads and a texture library in the RIP, which the Mimaki lacks.
Zünd showed its new S3 digital cutting table for the first time. This is a compact, fast model that can cut (or route) anything from paper up to solid materials 25 mm thick. It’s available with bed sizes from 1330 x 800 mm up to 2270 x 1200 or 1130 x 1600 mm.
Economic news from the printing industry as a whole remains mixed, but on the basis of visitor numbers and reported sales interest here, the wide format sector seems to have finally regained its equilibrium.
