The Drive to go Wide

Wide-format print has long been the domain of photolabs and specialty sign, billboard and point-of-purchase print providers. Today a growing number of commercial graphic arts firms—large and small—are readily stepping into the market. Demand for digital is growing among all segments of the printing industry. The retail value of wide-format digital graphic revenues, including ink, media and hardware, is projected to reach $9.4 billion by 2008. Most shops with full-sized offset presses may have already adopted wide inkjet printers for imposition proofing. Perhaps 85% to 90% of commercial printers are using wide-format inkjets for proofing, estimates Steve Urmano, marketing manager at manufacturer Mimaki USA. Urmano's view is telling, as was his presence as a Graph Expo exhibitor, since Mimaki historically targeted its wide-format machines to sign industry printers, not for proofing devices.

Smaller printers, actively seeking new offerings for customers, find the short-run, high value-added wide-format print is very compatible with other short-run, quick turn work they do. And the investment in low-end systems can be extremely modest.

Many premedia firms, adept at color control and maximizing image content and quality, see it as a natural extension. For them, wide format becomes part of their continuous quest to manage and maintain customer graphic assets. And naturally enough, digital print manufacturers are also looking at traditional sign shops—long dominated by screen printing presses—as potential customers.

The appeal of the market to printers is validated as well by steady movement of suppliers into this arena. “We're seeing more and more printers expand their capabilities to include wide-format printing and, as a result, we're expanding our offerings in that area,” says Steve Bennett, VP sales and marketing at Fujifilm Graphic Systems. The company has worldwide distribution rights for the Inca digital printers, and owns a wide-format ink source—Fuji Sericol.

While various printer brands rest on identical platforms, these are distinguished by the substrates, software and ink sets bundled with them. It's possible to find the same Inca, Epson or HP from a variety of sources. In other cases, unique platforms and transports will share common inkjet heads—Epson, HP, Spectra or Xaar, for example.

Acquisitions are also reshaping the market. During Graph Expo, wide-format supplier MacDermid Colorspan was acquired by HP, which says the acquisition extends its presence into the sign shop and quick-printing market. In another indication of the markets' varying directions, HP says it plans to use the Colorspan organization to deliver lower-cost platforms and its UV technologies to supply print service providers expanding into outdoor applications and more industrial volume runs.

efi showed the progress of its assimilation of VUTEk, acquired in 2005. efi's wide-format RIP is now fully integrated to the latest platforms of VUTEk units. Epson also moved further into the very wide-format category with its new Stylus Pro 11880, complete with new print head architecture to complement its 64´´ girth. Canon released 8000S and 9000S products with double the speed of earlier releases.

The point of the demonstrations was to indicate how easily the production operations for wide-format and commercial print can be integrated. As the speed of these devices increases, they are becoming more and more capable of production print output for short-run projects. Faster printing capabilities and more durable ink technologies have even brought about overlaps between wide inkjet printers and digital presses.

Wide-format capabilities for commercial print may have been most clearly represented in the efi and HP booths, where hybrid workflows that serve both digital production printing and wide-format printing (and, in efi's case, commercial lithography) were featured. Kodak, which also has workflow solutions that cover the entire printing gamut, elected not to show its Encad wide-format printers on the floor.

While wide format is certainly more than just how fast you can print, a common theme among exhibitors was the ever-faster production time. Part of this is achieved through more nozzles and new print heads, but efficiency has also been created through advances such as self-maintaining equipment, the ability to change ink cartridges on the fly, dual paper infeeds and built-in hard drives for faster file spooling.

Manufacturers tend to put the speediest rates on their brochures. Keep in mind that's generally at lower resolution. In some cases, printers are looking to output higher resolution images because that is what their customers are asking for. More than one demonstrator on the show floor acknowledged that the higher resolution capabilities are often a sales tool for printers. They can hook their customers with the extremely high quality of the latest printers, and then clinch the sale by showing they can print quality that's almost as good in a lot less time and for less money.

Print providers should not consign wide-format work to sign shops, says Fujifilm's Bennett. He urges commercial printers to become a one-stop shop, since print buyers want to leverage their buying power, and simplify their purchasing process, by consolidating sources. “The commercial print buyer knows he has to do more with his dollars,” he says.

The commercial printer can also sell consistency of output. Wide-format devices are often used to produce components for promotional campaigns, integrated with other offerings such as variable or transpromotional digital printing, offset production, or perhaps even samples or retail display kits.

The commercial printer's familiarity with color management and the quality control available in closed-loop systems can be a strong selling point in capturing the wide-format order.

Conversely, wide-format's added color gamut can allow commercial printers to output jobs with extreme color needs—reaching beyond offset color limits to achieve effects otherwise unattainable.

An example of mixing and matching offerings, and the crossover between proofing quality and salable runs, is evident in the work of Prestige Graphics, Reston, VA digital print firm. President Mark McCall has been using the efi Colorproof XF proofing and production application, based on a bestcolor platform, for an annual awards exhibit for the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, DC, since 2003.

Prestige used the device-independent color management and digital workflow system to drive a Canon imagePROGRAF iPF9000 large format color production printer to produce prints for the six-month exhibit, which opens Oct. 30. The 61 full-color photo prints measured 4×6´, 2×3´, 2×5´ and 5×10´. Obviously the color had to be brilliant and sufficiently durable for the length of the show.

Prestige also handles digital photography, using a larger 4×5´´ format camera, digital lenses and Phase One scanback system to capture file sizes up to 105 mb 300 dpi RGB uninterpolated. The ability to capture a large size enables reproduction of some extraordinary fine art pieces as well.

For large blow-ups it uses a drum scanner. With 12000-dpi optical resolution, 35 mm transparencies can be scanned to grow to sizes up to 3,000%.

“This client comes back to me every year with this exciting and very high-profile assignment,” says McCall, who calls the project is a “crowning achievement” for Prestige Graphic. “The color fidelity I'm able to produce is amazing; far surpassing what I could do with anything else.” McCall has more than 20 years of direct hands-on experience in prepress with an emphasis on color correction. To implement the wide-format offering, he worked with Chromaticity, Inc., a specialist in deployment of color management, proofing and inkjet imaging technologies.

Here's a run-down of wide-format providers at Graph Expo:

Agfa, which marketed a line of proofing wide-format printers under its Sherpa label, now has a complete suite of UV printers in a range of sizes. The :Anapurna line starts with the M model, which prints media up to 63´´ (62´´ are printable) using a six-ink system, at speeds up to 161 sq.ft per hour. It uses UV inks and a two-lamp curing system. The 1440×720-dpi resolution capability allows for photorealistic close-ups.

Canon had several releases at this year's Graph Expo. Most significant for wide-format are the ImagePROGRAF 8000S (44´´) and 9000S (60´´) printers. Canon took its 8000 and 9000 machines and reduced the LUCIA pigment inks from 12 colors to eight and gave them a speed bump. The company says the “S” in the name stands for Speed, and the new machines are 40% faster than their predecessors. Printing an A0-sized sheet (32.5×40.6´´) takes just under five minutes in standard mode. The speed, in part, results from a dual printhead system with 30,720 nozzles.

efi had its largest Graph Expo exhibit ever. The efi/VUTEk QS3200 UV-curing digital inkjet printer received Graph Expo Worth-a-Look honors. It delivers high-quality print at speeds of up to 900 sq.ft. per hour. (That's 22 boards measuring 4×8´). efi had several printers running, including the QS2000, QS3200, and 3360EC superwide-format printers, with connectivity to the Fiery XF production workflow and color management solution. The company also featured its inkjet printers at other booths around the show floor, including a QS2000 driven by a Fiery at the Pitman booth.

Graph Expo visitors got a first look at Epson's enhanced Pro Imaging line with the introduction of the Epson Stylus 4880, 7880, 9880, and 64´´ Epson Stylus Pro 11800. The 11800 is the company's first 64´´ printer, with a new nine-channel print head with 360 nozzles per channel. Featuring an even higher level of ink droplet accuracy, and drops as small as 3.5 picoliters, the MicroPiezo TFP print head has a new ink repelling coating technology to significantly reduce nozzle clogging.

Fujifilm Graphic Systems presented a comprehensive family of digital print devices by releasing several new printers including the world's fastest inkjet printer, the Inca Onset, capable of printing as fast as 5,382 sq.ft. per hour. Because that machine is so large, Graph Expo visitors saw it in action on video. Also introduced was the Acuity HD 2504, a UV flatbed printer for near photographic quality, and a new version of the Inca Spyder 320 Q which, among other things, adds two additional colors (now at eight), and a smaller spot size. Both machines use the Sericol Uvijet inks.

GandInnovations featured its new Jeti 3148-X2 UV flatbed printing one 4×8´ sheet in less than a minute. The flatbed features 48 Spectra print heads and provides high-speed graphics in six colors at an effective resolution of 1200 dpi and a production speed of 2400 sq.ft per hour.

Hewlett-Packard showed its latest eight-color pigment ink-based Designjet z6100, which comes in 42´´ and 60´´ models. It prints over 1,000 sq.ft. per hour. It also features HP's new Double Swath Technology, and the first-ever Optical Media Advance Sensor. The entire z series, including the z2100 and z3100 includes an embedded x-Rite i1 spectrophotometer.

ColorSpan demonstrated the 54´´ 5465UV printer. It uses variable drop printheads to achieve addressable resolutions of 600×300, 600×600, and 1200×600 dpi and an apparent resolution up to 1800 dpi.

Mimaki featured the new JV33 Solvent Printer, which adds two models to the JV3 lineup. The JV3-130S 54´´ and JV33-160S 64´´ are designed for printing seamless graphics and vehicle wraps.

The JV33 is for the budget minded who require good performance. The printers feature a 30% increase in speed with resolutions up to 540×1080 dpi, and print speeds of 128 sq.ft. per hour.

Mutoh, showed the ValueJet 1204-48 and ValueJet 1604-64. ValueJet includes 48´´, 64´´ and 100´´ models, and printing speeds up to 185 sq.ft. per hour. It also features Mutoh's patented Intelligent Interweaving Printing Technique.

Océ brought some machines to the show that came out a bit too late for last year's show. The new dual ink (low-solvent or eco-solvent) CS9090 printer is a super-wide (90´´) version of the CS9065 released last year. The machine is designed for long, unattended production runs, using a bulk rewinder and handling 200-lb. rolls.

Xerox provided a technology demonstration of a new color wide-format system for indoor/outdoor use: the 8200, designed for commercial printers and in-plant operations and that can be used to produce indoor and outdoor print applications. Not yet available, the series will include 65´´ and 90´´ inch models. The 8200 series prints at resolutions that range from 360 to 1440 dpi at typical quality production speeds from 162 to 215 sq.ft. per hour.

The growing popularity of printing on rigid substrates opens the door to building point of purchase and movie theater displays. Contour cutting brings an added dimension to such applications. And it also permis creation of unusual shapes. Gerber, ArtworkEskofot, Zund/Océ, and Mikkelson Graphic Engineering (MGE) showed such systems. Océ announced a complete digital system for rigid and flexible display graphics media, the Streamlined Workflow. It consists of a Zund digital cutting table with tools, software, and pre- and post-installation application training and support.

ONLINE: www.canonusa.com, oceusa.com, graphics.kodak.com, mutoh.com, mge-us.com, canon.com, mimaki.com, xeikon.com, xerox.com, epson.com, fujifilmgs.com, and efi.com