With the first of this Drupa launched machine now installed in the UK Nessan Cleary takes a closer look.
Screen used Drupa this spring to launch the Truepress W1632 UV. As the name implies, this is a UV flatbed wide-format printer, taking media up to 1.6 x 3.2m and up to 48mm thick. Bui Burke, sales director for Screen UK, is in no doubt that its key attribute is its high speed, saying: “Normally when you run a wide-format machine flat out at its top rated speed you quickly realise that the quality is not commercially acceptable. But this has 94m2/hr and really doesn’t seem to print differently at its maximum speed.”
It’s a point echoed by Geoff Rawlings, managing director of Best Digital, a large-format POS specialist based in Welwyn Garden City, which became the first company in the world to install one of these flatbeds. Rawlings says: “It was very quick but still retained the quality that we expected.” Best Digital will use it to produce POS on a variety of materials from Dibond to cardboard.
Rawlings points out that although the W1632 UV carries a Screen badge, it’s been built by Screen’s subsidiary, Inca Digital. As such it can be seen as an evolution of Inca’s Spyder range of flatbeds, which have proven highly successful workhorses in the UK. But there are a number of important differences when it comes to the W1632 UV. The most noticeable is the use of Dimatix Polaris printheads, which have a relatively small drop size of 12 picolitres, with Screen claiming 900dpi actual resolution, 1200 apparent. The heads are water-cooled.
The printheads are fitted individually into the print carriage and each head is then adjusted to the machine, leading to better alignment and print quality than with the Spyders where the heads were part of a module. This new fitting also means that it’s easier to replace individual heads.
As with other flatbeds, the media remains static on the bed while the print carriage travels the length of the bed. But where the print carriage is normally fitted to the chassis, in this case it runs on air bearings and is part of the bed assembly so that the printheads are more closely aligned to the bed.
Like other Inca machines, it has an automatic cleaning station to keep the nozzles from clogging. It can also map between missing nozzles to keep the machine going until there’s a chance to replace the printhead.
It uses the same inks as Screen’s roll-fed 2500 UV printer, which makes for easy inventory management for anyone running both machines. These inks are sold as Screen inks, but are manufactured by Sericol as are the inks for Inca’s Spyder range. Burke says the inks are very flexible, adding: “It has good adhesion to difficult substrates like glass and acrylic and very light materials which can be folded up without cracking.”
There are six heads per colour, with the base machine having four channels for CMYK though there is an option for adding light cyan and light magenta. However, there is no option for white ink.
Burke points out that white ink is typically used as a backing for backlit applications and that it’s not very efficient to lay down a large area of white with the W1632’s small picolitre droplets, which would lower the speed of the machine, and increase the ink consumption.
Screen supplies the Wasatch Rip with this printer but there other Rips available, depending on customer needs. Screen also has a production workflow system, EquiosNet, albeit mainly developed for commercial print environments, but which can tie the W1632 UV into a wider workflow and add other functions such as colour management and variable data. The printer, including the Rip, should cost around £200,000.