Electronics For Imaging, Inc. announced that one of its customers, Barcelona-based business Open Print, has transformed its production operations leveraging the many quality, productivity and sustainability advantages that the EFI™ VUTEk® h5 hybrid flatbed/roll-to-roll superwide-format LED inkjet printer offers. Previously, the company carried out much of its work - including comprehensive graphics services for the retail visual merchandising, event and tradeshow markets - using a 2-metre wide EFI VUTEk UV-curable hybrid printer. The company's new upgrade to a faster, wider, LED inkjet solution has quickly changed things for the better for the Spanish display graphics specialist.
"We chose the EFI VUTEk h5 because it provided greater production capacity, time savings and versatility compared to the competitors," said Germán Sferco, director of Open Print. "Thanks to this platform, we have successfully improved production with unrivalled quality, productivity and image resolution, together with improved delivery times. This has had a positive impact on customer satisfaction with our quality and turnaround."
With the h5 model in operation, Open Print has created a significant competitive advantage. "This equipment brings us an unprecedented level of quality that contributes to our brand value as a company," said Sferco. "Additionally, as it is a hybrid printer, we can offer great versatility" thanks to its ability to quickly change from flatbed to roll-to-roll printing.
"The EFI VUTEk h5 also has a wide range of supported substrates," Sferco added. "It features excellent reproduction of shadows, gradients and transitions, alongside fantastic printing of small body text with less-blurry edges and greater clarity across all printing modes."
The EFI VUTEk h5 is a superwide-format hybrid inkjet printer that can reach a print resolution of up to 1,200 dots per inch. It offers a choice of four or eight colours plus white, and an up to nine-layer print capability. X4 Technology on the printer - an option to quickly and automatically use the eight ink channels in a faster CMYK x 2 configuration - gives Open Print the ability to print up to 109 boards per hour.
UltraDrop and LED 'cool cure' imaging open the door to profits
The printer delivers the advantage of "cool cure" LED curing that require less energy usage, as well as 7-picolitre UltraDrop™ Technology that uses smaller droplet sizes with true multi-drop addressability for exceptional smoothness in shadows, gradients and transitions.
The small drop sizes also give Open Print a significant improvement in terms of ink volume usage compared with its former UV-cure device. "We use original EFI inks, and we are seeing a significant savings. Because of that, almost 50% of our production is already being carried out on this platform."
The LED curing technology offers significantly longer life compared with mercury arc lamps. "Along with reduced operating costs, we are seeing fewer consumable parts, and a reduction in waste. It is a much more ecological print solution," said Sferco.
Of the 40 people who work in Open Print across two work shifts, three are assigned to operate the EFI VUTEk h5, which runs with the EFI Fiery® proServer digital front end (DFE). Thanks to this Fiery DFE, the three staff responsible for the new printer can handle all of their advanced production functions, such as nesting, step and repeat, scaling, cropping, barcode creation and tiling, right at the server or remotely using Fiery Command WorkStation® - EFI's universal Fiery digital print job management interface. The Fiery proServer also offers advanced ICC colour management for reliable colour and superior-quality output.
Open Print offers customer-focused production, thanks to the advanced technology at its disposal. "The new EFI VUTEk h5 has become our main printer with one back up, and our aim is to acquire a second h5 to cover a third shift," Sferco said. "This equipment has opened new doors to large-scale projects by providing us with the necessary infrastructure to cover production peaks, so we are very satisfied with our investment."
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