NEW ORLEANS — October 10, 2017 — The Electronics For Imaging Inc. (EFI) exhibit at SGIA Expo shows how signage and graphics businesses can gain productivity and profitability advantages with a broad portfolio of digital production products, including the new EFI™ Pro 24f true flatbed LED printer shown for the very first time. EFI’s exhibit at the New Orleans tradeshow also includes an EFI Reggiani industrial textile digital printer making its North American debut. Plus, attendees can see a complete portfolio of production inkjet printers, workflow software and EFI Fiery® digital front end (DFE) technologies that help businesses drive a stronger competitive advantage.

Complete digital offerings for new growth opportunities

The EFI portfolio shown at SGIA Expo will help customers succeed in digital markets primed for continued growth. Customer Bill Stender, general manager of San Francisco-based graphics company SF Landmark, attended last year’s show to learn more about opportunities with textile-printed soft signage. That visit ultimately led him to acquiring an EFI VUTEk® FabriVU® 340 soft signage printer, an EFI Fiery proServer DFE, and EFI Digital StoreFront® technology for web-to-print ordering.

“I was very impressed with what EFI had to offer,” Stender said of his complete EFI production offering. “We’ve seen many of our professional customers moving into soft signage, and we believed we could bring our great reputation for quality and service to those customers to capture that volume, and that is proving to be true.”

Attendees at this year’s SGIA Expo can see how all of those technologies can be integrated — from online job submission to fast Fiery job processing, to high-end output on the 3.4-meter wide VUTEk FabriVU model — in EFI’s booth, #1501.

NEW: EFI Pro 24f LED flatbed printer

Visitors can also experience the latest advancements EFI has developed to fuel customers’ success in digital wide-format graphics production. The new Pro 24f LED flatbed printer launching at SGIA Expo is designed to give signage and graphics providers a sharp competitive edge. It contains the most powerful features, including EFI’s LED and variable drop grayscale head technology, and provides precision imaging, fine detail and outstanding image quality.

The printer, which has a 4×8-foot bed, prints in four colors plus white ink standard and is a highly strategic choice for signage, photographic backlit displays, art reproductions, membrane switches, graphic overlays, lenticular prints and other specialty applications up to 2 inches thick. Efficient hold-down with a multi-zone vacuum system eliminates masking while ensuring accurate registration for multiple over-prints or panels. EFI’s “cool cure” LED technology ensures low power consumption, minimal waste and compatibility with thinner and heat-sensitive substrates.

An EFI Fiery proServer Core DFE built into the printer features FAST RIP acceleration technology plus a host of color management and production options delivering a turnkey solution.

Affordable industrial digital textile production with the new FLEXY printer

For industrial apparel and décor textile applications, EFI is showcasing the new Reggiani ReNOIR FLEXY printer in its North American debut. The 1.8-meter wide printer delivers the high resolution and outstanding performance and results of larger Reggiani devices, yet it is affordable enough to allow nearly any business to get into industrial textile. It supports the widest variety of fabrics — from knitted to woven as well as low- and high-stretchable materials — using the printer’s new “Dynaplast” fabric adhesion device.

The printer incorporates the latest digital technologies for best-in-class performance, is easy to operate and has a low maintenance cost, making it an ideal solution for production and sampling alike. It also is the first EFI industrial textile printer to have a new green housing reflecting Reggiani’s brand heritage as well as the product line’s environmentally friendly production advantages, such an ink recovery feature that dramatically reduces ink consumption.

High-quality hybrid print for entry-level and high-volume production

The EFI Pro 16h LED wide-format hybrid roll/flatbed printer on display sets a new standard for entry-level production. This extremely affordable 65-inch wide Fiery Driven™ printer includes white ink and delivers a low total cost of ownership and superior image quality for a broad range of applications. It also has faster speeds than other EFI entry-level hybrid products, with some print modes offering up to a 30-percent higher throughput. The Pro 16h model is the winner of SGIA’s 2017 Product of the Year award for UV hybrid printers from $100,000 to $500,000, and it is available from EFI and a number of EFI partners, including two companies that are also exhibiting it at the show: Nazdar SourceOne® (booth #1545) and the Ricoh® Commercial & Industrial Printing Group (booth #1351).

Another hybrid product on display in the EFI booth, the EFI VUTEk LX3 Pro printer, is a 3.2-meter, eight-color, LED production device that helps companies perfect their premium-quality point-of-purchase (POP) business. Designed to deliver high throughput, higher volumes and shorter lead times, it prints up to 64 4×8-foot boards per hour in POP mode. Users benefit from the high image quality needed for premium retail work and, like the Pro 16h printer, its cool cure LED imaging reduces energy costs and gives access to more substrates, including heat-sensitive materials such as chipboard, foam and acrylics. Attendees can also witness a virtual reality demonstration of the EFI VUTEk HS125 Pro, a high-volume production hybrid inkjet press offering the productivity and low total cost of ownership needed to transition larger volumes of print from analog to digital printing.

Best-in-class print resolution and speed in roll-to-roll printing

EFI is also showcasing its next-generation line of VUTEk roll-to-roll printers, with the award-winning, 3.5-meter EFI VUTEk 3r LED printer on display at the show. This highly productive printer, with speeds up to 4,090 square feet per hour, has the highest resolution in its class, offering superior quality using EFI UltraDrop™ Technology 7-picoliter print heads.

Designed to be the industry’s most technically advanced LED roll-to-roll production offerings, EFI’s newest VUTEk printer line features an integrated production workflow that allows print professionals to do more work in less time. Users can choose a complete set of value-added options, including an inline finishing system for all-in-one printing, x-cutting, slitting and collecting, and additional white and light colors.

Integrated workflow in the ‘Journey of a Job’ for graphics production

EFI is bringing streamlined, simplified production workflows to the Big Easy with its advanced productivity software. Version 5 of the EFI Midmarket Print Suite, which includes EFI Pace™ as its core MIS/ERP software, drives end-to-end efficiencies for display, signage and graphics customers. Improvements include an upgrade to the Suite’s Superwide Format component database for easier estimating, planning and management in dedicated signage and graphics production printing environments, as well as a new, award-winning workbench tool and deeper integration with imposition and fulfillment components.

The end-to-end workflow possibilities shown at SGIA Expo extend to cross media marketing with EFI DirectSmile, a fully integrated marketing software solution for data-driven print, PURL, email, SMS, social media, mobile media and image personalization. The software enables customers to offer robust, customizable and flexible campaign management across multiple media, including traditional and soft signage.

Posted October 10, 2017

Source: Electronics For Imaging

WILMINGTON, Del. — October 10, 2017 – DuPont Advanced Printing will highlight new additions to its innovative digital ink offerings this week during the SGIA show in New Orleans, Louisiana, from October 10-12, 2017.

At the show, DuPont will showcase its recently launched DuPont™ Artistri® Xite S2500 (medium viscosity) and S3500 (high viscosity) dye sublimation inks. Backed by more than 25 years of digital inkjet manufacturing and technical support, the innovative inks are now available for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and printers. They offer superior product consistency, jetting reliability and color print performance for printing on polyester textile substrates.

“We are happy to offer dye sublimation inks for a wide range of viscosities. This allows printers to enjoy the benefits of the strong black and vibrant colors that the Artistri brand offers regardless of what printhead they use,” said Sam Ponzo, regional director – Americas, DuPont Advanced Printing.

In 2016, DuPont Advanced Printing announced the launch of improved DuPont Artistri inks that will deliver brighter colors, shorter production cycles and higher production throughput for direct-to-garment and roll-to-roll digital printing.

Posted October 10, 2017

Source: DuPont Advanced Printing (DuPont)

ROSH-HA’AYIN, Israel — October 9, 2017 — Kornit Digital has announced details of the company’s participation in the upcoming SGIA Show in New Orleans, La., October 10-12, 2018.

At booth #1617, Kornit will show a variety of systems and solutions for both direct-to-garment and direct-to-fabric printing. The Allegro direct-to-fabric printer will, for the first time, print using neon inks, enabling new and creative applications. As part of Kornit’s ambition to provide customers a seamless end-to-end workflow experience, the company will set up a garment decoration factory where visitors can design their individual shirts and have them produced live during the show. This solution is based on Kornit’s collaboration with market leader Custom Gateway. In addition, visitors can experience live demos of the heavy-duty direct-to-garment printing system Avalanche 1000 R-Series and the Kornit Vulcan, a digital alternative to screen printing. The Vulcan is the winner of the SGIA’s prestigious 2017 Product of the Year Award, in the category “Direct-to-garment printers (Color Shirt – Not White)”. Kornit’s partner Hirsch will display a Storm Hexa at booth #1977.

Shai Terem, president, Kornit Digital North America, commented: “For almost 15 years, Kornit keeps pushing the boundaries of digital textile printing. Our latest innovations will help screen printers, textile printers and garment decorators to come up with new applications and secure healthy margins.”

Allegro’s new colors

The new neon inks – pink and yellow – extend the Allegro’s color gamut by brighter colors and new shades while ensuring excellent color fastness. This will help Allegro users to penetrate new market segments and to increase system utilization, for example in fashion, sportswear and children’s wear. Existing Allegro customers can move to the new inks which are field upgradeable.

The Kornit Allegro is the only true digital solution for direct-to-fabric textile printing which eliminates the need for pre and post-treatment for multiple fabrics, all within a seven meters integrated production line. The system is 70.8-inches (1.80 meters) wide, and is based on Kornit’s NeoPigment^™ printing technology, which supports high quality printing on both natural, man-made and synthetic fabrics. The Kornit Allegro can be located anywhere without environmental constraints, designed to support ultra-short up to medium-length runs. It offers amazing print quality, a vivid and wide color gamut, excellent color fastness and hand feel, a fully sustainable and safe process, and is OekoTex 100 certified.

The Kornit Avalanche 1000 R-Series

Designed for the mass production of garments, Kornit’s Avalanche 1000 R-Series has dual pallet industrial production capability, and is a very robust platform designed for heavy duty use. Thanks to a unique and patented double bridge architecture, the white and the color print phases can happen in parallel, for optimized and unique dark garment efficiency. The system generates very high speeds and excellent print quality. It prints up to 220 light and 160 dark garments per hour. The Avalanche 1000 R-Series is perfectly suited to be used all day, every day and for all volumes. It is equipped with a recirculating ink system. This technology, which Kornit also uses in the Storm series, the Allegro and the Vulcan, optimizes print quality, reliability and ink efficiency of the new Avalanches. As a result, users of the Avalanche R-Series benefit from up to 20 percent ink savings and faster system availability after the start-up process.

The Kornit Vulcan

Kornit’s Vulcan — commercially available since beginning of 2017 — is a digital alternative to screen printing machines. This heavy-duty production system is targeted to screen printers producing collections and short runs for retailers and promotional purposes. The Vulcan offers the lowest cost per print for run lengths between 50 and 500 garments. Unlike Kornit’s traditional direct-to-garment printing systems, the Vulcan sports a conveyor system for the printed pallets with pre-treatment, white and CMYKRG printing happening in sequence. The Vulcan prints up to 250 garments per hour, both on dark and light garments.

Custom Gateway partnership

As part of Kornit’s ongoing effort to surround its production technology with an ecosystem of workflow and mass customization solutions, the company has initiated a collaboration with Custom Gateway, a leading solution provider for advanced web-to-print businesses enabling personalized, customized and print-on-demand products with a full production workflow solution.

The outcome of this partnership is an end-to-end web-to-print and fulfillment solution, combining Kornit’s one-step printing process with a complete workflow including a web shop, order management and automated production.

Posted October 9, 2017

Source: Kornit Digital