Display Wizard has purchased EFI Vutek 32r + and Mimaki UJV100-160 printers from CMYUK to replace existing ‘malfunctioning and under-performing’ equipment.

The Preston-based wide-format digital printing company, founded in 2004, primarily serves the exhibitions industry. Three years ago, it bought a Jetrix printer, but a power surge at the company’s production facility rendered it unusable and non-repairable. A part solution response was to purchase an HP 800 Latex printer to output banners , while all other print work was temporarily outsourced.

The HP Latex printer was replaced with a Mimaki UJV100-160 from CMYUK. This is a dedicated roll-to-roll UV curable printer that offers high quality, stability, and productivity due to a NCU (Nozzle Check Unit), NRS (Nozzle Recovery System), and MAPS4 (Mimaki Advanced Pass System4). The DAS (Dot Adjustment System) incorporated into the new 100 series printers means that dot position and feed correction are now automated, reducing operator workload.

With the Mimaki now handling all the former Latex work, the company still needed to manage pop-up and panelling jobs, which often use a heavy 465-micron media. The EFI Vutek Pro 32r+ is a 3.2m wide production level printer with a four-colour system with a white ink option and 7pl drop size for high quality.

Mr Symonds added, ‘We came to the conclusion that a big industrial printer from EFI was just what was needed. I’ve always seen EFI printers as the Rolls Royce of the digital printing industry, lots of companies use them, and the technology is proven. The Jetrix was a good piece of kit when it worked, although I found the prints to be quite grainy probably because they print at 14pL. The Vutek 32r+ prints at a much higher definition at double the speed and allows for dual roll printing.

‘The EFI demonstration showing how the dual rolls worked was impressive. We’ve printed dual rolls since, flawlessly. We’ve also run triple rolls and that’s worked well too.’

At the time of installing the Vutek Pro 32r +, Amira Bouchiba, CMYUK academy manager, implemented an automated workflow that does away with the need to manually create files in the company’s existing but now defunct i-Cut software. The machine has an in-built Fiery RIP that creates both a print file for the printer and a cut file that it sends to the Kongsberg cutting table.

Mr Symonds said, ‘Fiery has improved our workflow. It has completely removed the iCut route and has saved us a great deal of time.’