Looking far and wide

We are reading on a daily basis the slow death of the high street under the increasing dominance of the internet shopping environment. We all know how easy it is to click and purchase for almost any product.

With the rise of the global virtual market place, it is easy and cheap to get anything from any part of the world. Providers have made the purchasing of an item in under two seconds easy, especially when you enable tools such as eBay's streamlined checkout. Find what you need, press click and before you know it there is an email in your inbox with the receipt. Not even needing you to lift anything off the sofa apart from a finger; all completed within the advert gap and still time to make a cup of tea.

There are calls to place additional taxes on online retailers as an attempt to fortify the high street and provide them with support. But as we all know, clumsy changes like this are unlikely to change our shopping habits, double the price of some of the products online and that would still not cover the cost of the parking in any major town.

So, what are the shops doing to fight back and what are they using to accomplish this? EFI is one manufacturer that has done a lot to understand where they can help and illustrate their reasoning in a white paper produced by the International Sign Association called “Capturing the Next Evolution of Wide Format Print Opportunities”. This is an interesting research document detailing in which direction the consumer market is heading and how the high street can fight back against the seemingly ever encroaching online giants.

Outlined in the paper are the basic differences between both shopping opportunities. If you consider the online shopping experience as a whole, it is engaging mainly one sense. However, the high street retailer recognises their experience can engage all five senses and it becomes a multi-sensory activity and not a task. They are striving for a full immersive experience and to do this EFI have a series of machines that can produce high quality Point Of Purchase (POP) products. In particular one of the most productive is the Vutek LX3.

The Vutek LX3 has been specifically designed to slot into the markets the International Sign Association’s white paper highlights. All areas apart from solvent-based inkjet printers are going to have an 8% increase in demand over the next two to three years. Specifically due to the demand from the high street, the wide-format printers are in most demand, and the Vutek LX3 is certainly wide.

It is 3.2 metres across and is called a hybrid printer in so much as it can be used to print on almost any rigid substrate, providing it is under 50mm thick and is equally as happy to produce on roll-based materials, hence the hybrid concept.

To handle the wide array of substrates, the Vutek LX3 is provided with a multi-roll configuration which is two up and up to 1,520mm wide, with optional heavy duty unwinder (HDU). But EFI has also designed what it calls the three-quarter automated loader/unloader and optional extension table with casters making positioning of it easy.     

The three-quarter automated loader/unloader allows up to 94 1.2 x 2.4m board per hour in express mode and 64 of the same board size in production mode: this equates to 318sq m and 215sq m respectfully.

To ensure this process goes smoothly, EFI has designed the Vutek LX3 with a patented arch system that applies pressure to the substrate down onto the corrugated drive belt. A series of drive and guide wheels ensures the substrate is held firmly in place and driven into the printer.

The print head itself can print either the standard four colour set or can print with eight colours including white ink printing or double overprinting. Furthermore, the print head can deploy 12pL greyscale output which means the quality of the POP production is very eye catching.

The fact the print quality from the Vutek LX3 is so striking, the high street applications cover a long and impressive list. EFI list amongst other applications, banners, billboard, display and floor graphics and vehicle and shop front wraps.

It is quite clear to see that EFI has looked at the aforementioned white paper and seen a market a wide format printer can excel in. Whilst the high street is fighting back with the multi-sensory experience, clearly one of the senses close to the top of the list must be visual impact. The Vutek LX3 easily packs a punch in this area.

EFI has not only focused on the end user for the new printer. The cost of ownership and the margin per copy is also where this printer scores. It is pointless having a printer that can deliver the impact needed but be too expensive to use or run.

A USP for the Vutek LX3 is the fact it uses the cool-cure LED UV drying system in the inkjet printer. This delivers a number of benefits to the printer, the copy is instantly dry meaning handling the product post-production is quick, easy and does not affect the product.

Secondly, the EFI LED inks contain less than 0.03% volatile organic compounds or VOCs which are so counter-productive when aiming for a green product. EFI also claims the patented inks contain 50% monomers and oligomers which find their source in biomass or renewables. Although wrapped in a green blanket, a lot of work has gone into these UV LED inks to ensure the colour quality and durability are of the highest quality, along with the colour gamut being of one of the widest in this category of machine.

Driving costs down further, the fact the Vutek LX3 uses less power due the LED cool-cure drying system, the bulb replacement has minimal impact and the lack of need for warm up cycles for the lamps means power use is extremely low. All in all, waste from the Vutek LX3 is very low.

As with any of the EFI printers, the Vutek LX3 comes tied in with a significant number amount of ancillary equipment to ensure maximum up time. The inkjet printer has bidirectional communication capability between the Fiery XF RIP and printer. To assist with the customer interaction it integrates seamlessly with EFI web-to-print and MIS/ERP solutions with native JDF connectivity.

If the Internal Sign Association is correct and the high street has a good chance to fight back enveloping the customer with more than with a click and buy concept, the Vutek LX3 will certainly play its part.

Brian Sims Principal Consultant, Metis Print Consultancy, www.metis-uk.eu

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