News

Hollywood Monster has bought a 3.2m wide MTEX 5032 direct to textile printer with in-built fixation. So excited was the Birmingham operation that it shot a video of the printer being delivered to site by Portuguese manufacturer POD Iberia distributor Digital Print Innovations (DPI).

Cross Media 2013 last week saw a 12% increase in visitor numbers compared to the inaugural show in 2012. Over 2,750 marketers, printers, publishers, brands and creative agencies attended the two-day event at the Business Design Centre in London, and the five theatres - Cross Media, Digital and Direct Marketing, Content Marketing and Publishing Strategies, Print and Innovation and Mobile Marketing – often had standing room only during the 50 seminars on offer. Next year the event will move to the autumn - 21 to 22 October.

21 of this year’s SGIA Golden Image Awards have been given for graphics produced on Roland printers. The competition allows digital print providers to show off their best achievements and hundreds of entries were evaluated by a team of imaging professionals, who awarded gold, silver and bronze ribbons for the best prints. The following businesses took top honours for work produced with Roland large-format printers:

The Printing Charity has received a donation of the remaining charitable funds from the John Crosfield Foundation which is being wound up. The Printing Charity will continue to administer the funds to provide grants to students undertaking courses related to printing technology and printing business management.

Amari has introduced Green Cast for in-store display graphics. The media is manufactured from 100% recycled acrylic materials collected from northern Italy and southern Germany by licensed recycling companies. It is transported to the Madreperla plant in Italy in 20 tonne loads, and is then cleaned, sorted and put through a patented process that breaks down the material into its constituent components from which are made the fresh acrylic sheets.

As part of its strategy to expand its wide-format division Perfect Colours has appointed former GMG UK man Simon Landau as graphics and colour director. Following the move GMG UK has appointed Perfect Colours master reseller for GMG ProductionSuite, its wide-format production workflow.

Sihl Direct UK’s environmentally friendly billboard and poster media, TriSolv, can be used on the new generation HP latex printers, including the L26500 and L28500 as well as the LX 600/ LX 800 machines.

The newly released SAi EnRoute 5.1 software package includes more than two dozen new productivity enhancing features and improvements, including new import filters, additional nesting options for the Automatic Toolpath Processing (ATP) option and new Parametric Textures.

Inca Digital has launched its third Excellence Awards (IDEAs 2014) to celebrate the creativity and ingenuity of the work its customers produce using UV inkjet technology. Judges evaluate entries based upon quality, innovation and creativity across five different categories: display graphics, 3D POS, interior decoration, product decoration, and interactive displays. The five category winners will each receive an IDEAs Trophy, travel to Munich, and two nights’ accommodation to attend Fespa Digital 2014. As an added incentive this year, award winners will also be able to attend the Inca Digital Summit, concurrently held in Munich on 20 May. Winners will receive their awards in the evening during an event jointly hosted by Inca and Fujifilm.

Agfa, which signalled its intention to enter the textiles market with the Ardeco printer back at Fespa 2013 in the spring, has shown the machine publically for the first time at SGIA.

Ink performance, media flexibility and consistent colour control have been key considerations in Kaylee having ordered a Fujifilm Acuity Advance Select X2 to replace its outdated digital flatbed equipment.

Durst, which introduced the Rho 2012 UV flatbed at Fespa 2013, showed off the higher productivity Variodrop version for the first time at the SGIA show. The initial unit had a 12 picolitre drop size and could produce up to 490m2/hr at 1000dpi. With the Variodrop greyscaling technology the drop size changes to 20 picolitres and the printer is said to be up to 25% more productive.

HP has used the SGIA show in the US to announce upgrades, certifications and workflow solutions for its large-format sign and display portfolio.

Mimaki has added the Tx500-1800B high-speed textile printer to its offering. The machine, which includes a tensionless conveyor belt to feed the fabric - enabling high quality printing on elastic materials, even with unattended operation - prints at speeds 1.6 times greater than conventional Mimaki textile printing products at 60m2/hr and 600 x 450 dpi. It can handle a wide range of textiles including cotton, silk, hemp and rayon.