The new SureColor SC-S60600 has been installed at PhotoBox.
A new trio of signage printing systems in the SureColor range and a new ‘super-fast’ 64-inch photo quality system aimed at commercial printers have been announced by Epson.
All three of the signage devices are also 64-inch wide machines. They are the SureColor SC-S40600, SC-S60600 and SC-S80600, and the replace Epson’s 30600, 50600 and 70600 systems. Built around the firm’s Precision Core TFP 360 dpi print heads, the printers have been completely re-designed inside, with a number of newly improved aspects that make them more robust as well as more productive than their predecessors.
Among the new features are a new friction feed roller that gives more friction over a wider area, new anti-static nip rollers with automatic control, improved Advanced Automatic Tension Control, which enables real-time control of tension to help improve print quality, an automatic maintenance system, ink mist collection, a new print head guard to reduce head crashes due to damage by foreign bodies, an ink flow regulator system that reduces the risk of sedimentation banding, new after-heaters, and an HTML-based printer management system accessible from laptop, tablet or mobile devices.
These systems also use a new Epson ink – the UltraChrome G3 ink set, which includes Red alongside CMYK, Lc, Lm, Lk, Orange, White, Metallic and a cleaning fluid. A 700 ml cartridge of CMYK inks is priced at £74.07. Customers that invest in the dual-head SureColor SC-S80600 can print with nine or ten colours, and can switch between white and metallic to suit the job requirements. This system prints at up to 95.1 square metres per hour (single-pass banner mode), 12.5 square metres per hour in 8-pass film mode. However, the 80600 is not due to be available until March 2016, costing from £16,135.
The SC-S60600 also has two PrecisionCore heads with CMYK x 2. It can produce high quality vinyl at 29.4 square metres per hour, and single-pass banners at up to 95.3 square metres per hour. Available immediately, it costs from £15,495. The SC-S40600 is a single head CMYK system for high quality POS and signage, delivering prints at up to 58.4 square metres per hour, and priced starting at £9995.
All three systems are bundled with an Onyx RIP, and Epson said the result of all the improvements to ink and mechanical performance will be a big improvement in the total cost of ownership of these printers, compared to others on the market.
B2C personalised photo printing company PhotoBox has installed five SureColor SC-S60600 printers in the UK to meet the growing demand for personalised photo canvases. James Lawrence-Jones, the company’s group technical innovation director, said it was looking for an ink-efficient printing system that could deliver ‘great quality at higher speeds with maximum reliability’. He added: ‘Our manufacturing challenges are unusual because we have to be able to print, finish and despatch a large number of canvases on a day, over 12,000 individual canvases a day 24/7 at Christmas for example, and we have to rely on the very best production equipment to meet our high quality standards and tight deadlines.’
Meanwhile, the more commercial-print focused SureColor SC-P20000 is a new addition to the range of printers that Epson announced for this sector in September 2015. It replaces the Stylus Pro 11880 and Epson notes its print quality and production speed capabilities, with a new UltraChrome Pro 10-colour inkset which includes four shades of black, a PrecisionCore Micro TFP print head capable of 2400 x 1200 dpi output even at high speeds, and high quality print at up to 17.5 square metres per hour. It is due to be available from March 2016.
