Nessan Cleary conducts a test to check whether this printer lives up to its promise to deliver good quality results at a relatively low cost.
The Japanese manufacturer Mutoh has been around since 1953, having started off making drafting machines before moving into wide-format inkjet printers. The mainstay of the Mutoh printer range currently is its solvent series, including the ValueJet 1638X that was launched earlier this year and the focus of this test.
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Mimaki launched this solvent printer at the last Fespa Digital show but it’s only recently started appearing in the UK. Here’s how Nessan Cleary found it when he put it to the test.
Solvent technology still dominates the market for roll-fed wide- format printers, mainly because it’s a proven performer that offers good quality results at a reasonable price. So this month we’ve been testing Mimaki’s latest solvent printer, the JV300.
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The Korean built Jetrix printers appear to offer good value for money, so how did this Jetrix model fare on test? Nessan Cleary reports.
Inktec, which was founded in 1992 in Korea, is best known as an ink manufacturer but has also developed its own range of Jetrix UV flatbed printers. It has a European office, based in Witney, Oxfordshire, which has installed some 35 printers in the last three years. Last year Inktec launched the first of its KX series, which now include the compact KX3, the mid-range KX5 and the much larger KX7, which we’ve tested this month.
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This month Nessan Cleary tests the latex printer that marks Ricoh’s first foray into wide-format printing.
The market for latex printers has been completely dominated by HP, despite a challenge from Mimaki. Now Ricoh, which supplies the Gen5 heads used by Mimaki, has entered the fray with the L4100 printer, available in 1.3 and 1.6m widths. Ricoh has rebadged Mimaki’s JV400 LX series, and there’s no discernible difference between the two apart from the sales and servicing, with Ricoh targeting its existing customer base of commercial printers and corporate print rooms.
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Epson’s first foray into wide-format printing was with a series of aqueous ink printers that established a good reputation for photographic and proofing applications. But Epson was slow to get into display graphics, preferring instead to sell its printheads and inks to other vendors on an OEM basis. However, in recent years Epson has made a determined play for the display print market, with both solvent and dye-sub printers as well as a newly-launched brace of aqueous CAD/ graphics machines.
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