Dutch sign specialist Gielen Reclame (Valkenswaard), along with a sign maker in Denmark and the Renault F1 Team, is one of the three European companies that have subjected the new generation TrueVIS from Roland DG to extensive practical testing.
The Dutch company has a great deal of experience with Roland devices – there were already six Roland printers in the production hall, and with the investment in two TrueVIS VG2 devices there are now eight. This made them the ideal customer to push the boundaries of this new printer.
Gielen Reclame was so enthusiastic about the beta test of the new 8-colour TrueVIS VG2 printer/cutter from Roland that the company purchased two machines. ‘The addition of the new orange ink now provides us with the opportunity to make even better prints with certain corporate identity colours,’ said owner Chris Gielen.
The TrueVIS VG2 is the latest generation printer/cutter from Roland DG. ‘In its development, we were able to build on more than 30 years of knowledge and experience with 16 previous generations of products in the print and cut market segment that is so important to us,’ said Karel Sannen, marketing manager at Roland DG, Benelux. ‘We have introduced more than 40 new and improved functions and features in the hardware, but also in the software and the ink, including orange ink for an even wider colour gamut. Together, these improvements ensure even better performance than previous generations. I am convinced that the TrueVIS VG2 truly sets the new standard in large format printing solutions. And that’s why I am happy that our beta test customers endorse that view as well.’
The TrueVIS VG2, introduced in March, is available in various ink configurations, including CMYK x 2 and CMYKLcLmLk with orange or white in the eighth colour channel. Gielen opted for orange as the eighth colour because he already has white ink on another Roland system. ‘We do a lot of printing for motor sport companies, and you can get great effects with a different type of foil, for example metallic, with white ink. On the other hand, the orange ink now offers us the option of making even better prints of difficult corporate colours,’ he said. ‘I come from the commercial printing world. With four-colour printing, we always had problems when there was orange in a corporate design; it often came out brown-ish when produced with four-colour process printing, irrespective of what the Pantone colour guide you placed next to it showed. Or you had to work with an additional PMS spot colour. Four-colour inkjet can have the same problem, but Roland has now solved this with its new orange TR2 ink.’
The TrueVIS VG2 hardware has also been improved in several ways. Sannen explained how that benefits customer productivity, ‘The machine’s start-up procedure has been shortened, and the cleaning cycle has been minimised. This saves time and ink.’ Should a nozzle fail during production, the Nozzle Mask function will switch off that part of the print head, ‘Printing can then continue at half speed until repairs can be made. Downtime and associated loss of productivity is therefore prevented.’
Moreover, the TrueVIS VG2 is equipped with the latest automatic pinch roller technology, whereby the middle pinch rollers are lifted when the cutting of a job commences, ‘This means that with a print-and-cut task, you no longer have to wait until the ink is completely dry before cutting.’ The roll-up unit for the print media has also been improved, so that the printed substrate can be rolled up more evenly and with more stability.
Gielen has also noticed the improvements, such as the new ‘Multiple Crop Marks’ feature, ‘The TrueVIS VG2 cutter is unbelievably accurate. We normally apply some overlap around the logos to be cut, to counter any imprecisions so that we do not get any white edges. But that is not really necessary with this system. In principle, we could cut without overlap, that’s how precise this machine is.’
Sannen explained how the VG2 achieves that, ‘In addition to the option of setting four register marks per print job, you can also define crop marks at line level. There is even a third option: printing register marks per object to be cut. This allows the machine to calibrate more often, resulting in unprecedented accuracy in contour cutting.’
Gielen mentioned another interesting advantage of the new Roland TrueVIS VG2, ‘We always print in high quality mode. That is how we came through the recent financial crisis. Our motto is: do not use cheaper materials or inks, but adhere to quality. Paying attention to your customers and their desire for the utmost in quality yields more than cutting back on materials ever would. However, at Roland’s recommendation, we have also started using the VG2 in the standard mode at 900 x 600dpi. We are positively surprised at the visible print quality, even in standard mode. There are, of course, critical colours to which this approach does not apply; but in 90 percent of the cases, you can do perfect work on the VG2 just using the standard setting.’
Submit your news and video content to journo@practicalpublishing.co.za
Subscribe to our YouTube channel, read the top 5 stories weekly on WhatsApp or sign up to our newsletter.
LOCAL DISTRIBUTOR |