EFI has announced its fastest roll-to-roll superwide-format solutions – the 350 and 520 centimetre wide VUTEk Q3r and Q5r UV LED printers, at EFI Engage, the first-ever worldwide virtual users’ conference for Electronics For Imaging, Inc. customers.
EFI Engage features groundbreaking new innovations that accelerate customers’ ability to profitably and efficiently transition from analogue to digital printing. The 25 January – 5 February event features a virtual exhibition hall, along with demonstrations and presentations on advanced Productivity Suite MIS/ERP, inkjet printing, and Fiery digital front end (DFE) solutions. Advanced superwide-format inkjet technologies at Engage include a new, higher-throughput VUTEk XT hybrid device – one of multiple superwide-format display graphics production solutions launching at the event.
‘EFI Engage features a wealth of content and information to help customers learn about important new opportunities, as well as gain actionable ideas that can propel them into a more efficient and profitable ‘next normal’ phase of business,’ said EFI Chairman and CEO Jeff Jacobson. ‘Attendees will learn about the strengths they can create in the future with leading-edge workflow innovation, along with the important expansion in print’s analogue-to-digital evolution that comes with our newest, most-advanced inkjet solutions.’
New product solutions:
EFI VUTEk Q3r and Q5r UV LED printers
The printers deliver expanded capabilities for a wide range of challenging, high-volume applications, with premium features such as multi-layer white and high-value in-line finishing, collection and auto backlit and blockout options that help users achieve a remarkably low total cost of operation.
EFI is setting new levels of production and efficiency for customers at the higher-volume end of the superwide-format signage and display graphics market. The product line delivers superior quality and a complete system solution with advanced roll-to-roll LED technology. The printers produce a wide range of challenging applications, like the most demanding premium POP with multi-layer white and cosmetics displays that demand the highest print quality to the highest volume campaigns that requires the lowest cost of production.
The 5.2 metre wide VUTEk Q5r printer runs at speeds up to 672 square metres per hour, and the 3.5 metre wide VUTEk Q3r model prints up to 558 square metres per hour. The printers take users further in many aspects including productivity and application reach and more so in their full system solution from file submission to finished print, which is already cut to size and rolled and marked for the designated display location. Users benefit from throughput that can be up to a few times faster than existing models in the market.
The world’s first VUTEk Q5r installation site, Yahav Digital Print, is a large wide format print production company currently with four EFI roll-to-roll printers and many more throughout its history. Zevik Nur, CEO of Yahav Digital Print, found the new capabilities of the Q5r go above and beyond just faster print to also deliver a complete full system solution from file submission to finishing.
‘Our new VUTEk Q5r was installed in October of 2020, and we have been running it in full production ever since,’ Nur said. ‘It has exceeded all our expectations in terms of reliability, production speeds, print quality, ink consumption, media utilisation and ease of use. We can shift a lot of jobs to the new Q5r, and our customers are highly satisfied with our ability to shorten lead time and produce even higher quality prints at faster speeds.’
The new printers feature up to nine ink colours (standard CMYK and optional lc, lm, lk, white and clear coat), enabling exact customisation of each printer to users’ needs and strategies. They also boast EFI UltraDrop™ Technology, featuring native 7-picolitre printheads with multi-drop addressability for high-definition image quality. Users gain outstanding smoothness in shadows, gradients and transitions, as well as precise and sharp 3-point size text with a true resolution of up to 1200 dots per inch. Their UV LED curing ensures not only cost savings but also a more environmentally friendly printing solution, consuming less energy and enabling the use of thinner, heat-sensitive substrates.
The printers also feature EFI’s ‘Power Tool’ options for advanced productivity and capabilities, including in-line quality inspection, in-line slitting and cutting, roll and tape collection, auto-calibration, automated backlit printing, automated blockout printing and much more.
Newly designed mobile operator touch screen stations for the VUTEk Q3r and Q5r printers offer operators maximum convenience. The touch screen stations also direct users to new EFI IQ™ optional cloud-based applications for easy monitoring and analysis of production activity, resulting in actionable data that can help operations be even more efficient and profitable.
Both printers include EFI’s industry-leading Fiery proServer Premium digital front end (DFE) with Fiery FAST RIP for accelerated file processing, maximising the printer investment by eliminating idle printer time. The printers’ Fiery DFE systems also include robust options such as Fiery Spot Color, Fiery Color Profiler Suite and Fiery Color Verifier for the ultimate in easy-to-use, proof-grade colour management.
Other new solutions include:
The new version 9 releases in EFI’s Productivity Suite offerings, which provide comprehensive, validated, end-to-end business and production management workflows for display graphics, based on EFI’s industry-leading MIS/ERP platforms, including Monarch, Pace™, Radius®, CTI and Technique software.
EFI’s new super-high-speed VUTEk XT hybrid printer – a breakthrough solution designed to drive a significant reduction in total cost of ownership with superior throughput exceeding 375 boards per hour, innovative ink delivery and the power of EFI’s integrated workflow. New CP5G ink delivery technology on the printer delivers complete ink circulation, superior dot placement, 5 picolitre drops and greyscale imaging. A robust feature set provides fine text imaging and near-lithographic imaging with a four-colour CMYK ink sets.
A second super-high-speed product: a single-pass for display graphics printer optimised for high-volume production on signage media at speeds up to 1000 sheets per hour.
The newest release of EFI’s Fiery Command WorkStation® management interface, version 6.6, which delivers the company’s most-robust search interface capabilities and powers faster curve and spot-colour editing capabilities, along with access to a host of additional features, such as the EFI IQ™ suite of cloud-based applications to help printing businesses extract value from data to minimise bottlenecks, optimise equipment utilisation and achieve higher print quality.
The latest version of Fiery JobFlow™, a prepress production automation solution that now gives users the power to significantly upscale images with excellent output quality, reorganise PDF pages to make long jobs more manageable, and collect jobs based on time to ensure meeting production deadlines.
The new EFI Fiery Command WorkStation offering – the free, central interface used to direct hundreds of thousands of Fiery Driven™ digital print devices around the world – helps users manage their digital print operations better, even across multiple printers and locations, and produce higher quality print with fewer mistakes.
The newest version of EFI Fiery JobFlow software breaks down the barriers to print automation. With the software, users can efficiently scale images for wide and superwide format applications. A pages module in the software enables operators to easily manage long jobs by splitting up a PDF using a set number of pages, PDF bookmarks, or page ranges. Users can also define job route behaviour in using JobFlow to get jobs printed as fast as possible when a Fiery server is unavailable.
An important production innovation for cut-sheet digital printing – the integration between EFI Fiery Impose software and Duplo DC-618 slitter/cutter/creaser devices – automates job preparation and finisher setup for higher-value custom jobs. The integration cuts the initial setup time of the workflow in half and saves users up to 70% in setup time preparing printing jobs with seamless, automated and two-way communication.
In addition to the latest EFI workflow, Fiery DFE and inkjet display graphics offerings featured in EFI Engage’s exhibit area, this year’s conference also features advanced solutions from participating partners, including 3M™ Commercial Solutions; Aberdeen Fabrics; Duplo®; ISCorp™; Lubrizol®, Progress® Software Corp.; Ricoh®; and Thomson Reuters®.
EFI
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