EFI used Fespa Digital to introduce its UltraDrop 7pl greyscale printhead technology on its Vutek GS series printers. At the event, where long-term customer Escher and Theiss Digitaldruck signed for a Vutek GS3250lx Pro 3.2m printer with LED cool curing and this new UltraDrop technology, EFI also announced that energy assessments carried out by Fogra have confirmed that Vutek wide-format printers with LED curing show energy reductions of up to 82% when compared with devices that use conventional mercury arc lamps. Fespa Digital also provided the European debut of the EFI H1625 LED printer, the first LED device in the company’s entry-level line-up, and of the EFI Vutek GS3250lxr Pro roll-fed printer. Plus there was the worldwide premiere of EFI Fiery proServer Version 6, a scalable digital front-end workflow.
All new Vutek GS series printers will now feature UltraDrop technology, which employs native 7pl printheads with multi-drop addressability in each dot position, giving high apparent resolution and high definition quality with four-level greyscale and two ink density levels.
Bavarian-based Escher and Theiss Digitaldruck, formed in 2008 by Helmut Escher and Alexander Theiss around a 5m Vutek printer, has bought various Vutek machines and EFI's Pace MIS software. Escher said: "Our new Vutek GS3250lx Pro can be integrated easily into our existing workflow. Its LED technology means that we can develop applications onto new media and become greener and more energy efficient. At Escher & Theiss we use solar energy when possible and the new printer's cool-cure energy savings will further help reduce our environmental footprint."
Fogra assessments on the LED Vutek printers showed that even in print-ready mode, the company's LX printers are shown to save up to 77% in electricity usage, simply because the LEDs are off, unlike mercury arc lamps which still consume power when the machine is idle between jobs. The calculations of Fogra's Energy Efficiency Project demonstrated that users can save around 16,000 Euros every year on power consumption
Fogra's comparisons with digital printers using conventional curing lamps showed that the former used 1.18kW/m2 while EFI's Vutek GS3250LX Pro used only 0.22 kW/m2.
The evaluations carried out employed Fogra's ‘Image Quality Test Suite’ for printing, with typical production and stand-by/print ready modes being used. The conditions were configured to emulate both highest productivity and greatest quality, incorporating the relevant machine combinations for accurate results.