London-based large format house Coloursonic has invested in a swissQprint Nyala flatbed UV printer, replacing both a latex flatbed and a roll-fed UV printer for expanded creative possibilities and improved reliability.
The Maida Vale company was set up 20 years ago by husband and wife team Paul and Michaela Chandler and serves a wide range of customers in London’s creative and cultural sectors. The Nyala flatbed with roll-to-roll option was installed the autumn of 2021 as a result of re-evaluating the business’s strategy in the face of the pandemic. Part of this involved opening up a web-to-print portal for the fine art part of the business to work with digital artists, but also revisting a 2019 project to upgrade an existing latex flatbed printer.
‘The research had already been done,’ explained Michaela Chandler, noting that it would have been easy to stick with the original plan and replace the flatbed with a newer model, but realising ‘That’s the sort of thinking our competitors would do. We wanted something that they didn’t have. We just didn’t know what that was’.
Samples, followed by a in-person demonstration of the Nyala’s capabilities were sufficient to persuade the Chandlers that this was the missing ingredient, with the quality even without calibration proving particularly impressive. The machine has replaced both the existing flatbed and a 3.2m roll-fed UV printer and Ms Chandler describes the creative possibilities as ‘limitless’.
‘The team love using it,’ she said, explaining also that switching from flatbed mode to roll to roll printing is quick and easy, with no wastage, and that energy consumption is significantly lower. ‘We love the Swiss precision,’ she added. ‘Everything about these machines is built to last. We no longer have to worry about expensive maintenance contracts or the machine breaking down.’
