Océ-Australia Limited has announced the release of its next generation Arizona, the Océ Arizona 350 GT wide format UV cured flatbed printer, offering high production speeds and support for white ink printing.
The new printer will make its debut in Australia at the Visual Impact expo in Sydney, October 30 to November 1.
Using UV curable inks and Océ VariaDot imaging technology to deliver near-photographic image quality, the Océ Arizona 350 GT can print on a wide variety of rigid substrates and offers printing onto flexible roll media via the roll media option.
It delivers production print speeds up to 22.2 square meters per hour on rigid media and up to 17.5 square meters per hour using the Roll Media Option. This enables users to print nearly sixty 1.22 x 2.44 m boards, or more than 150 square meters of flexible media in a single eight-hour shift.
The Arizona 350 GT prints onto rigid media up to 1.25 m wide x 2.5 m long x 48 mm thick, using four-color (CMYK) plus White UV curable inks. With the Roll Media Option installed, users can print onto flexible roll media up to 2.2 m wide.
The white ink option which can be installed at the factory or in the field, enables under-printing for non-white media or objects, over-printing for reverse backlit applications on transparent media and/or printing white as a spot color.
Under-printing white ink provides a base for non-white surfaces upon which color can be added, giving users the ability to expand their range of offerings to include specialty applications.
Over-printing white ink provides a diffusion layer for backlit applications that will be viewed from the unprinted side, enabling users to produce high quality backlit images for point-of-purchase applications.
Océ Product Manager for Display Graphics, Adrian Morris, says news of the Arizona 350 GT has already prompted a rush of enquiries from graphics professionals.
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The Océ Arizona GT with the roll media option. |
“The Arizona 250 GT is one of Océ’s most successful products and according to the independent wide format report FLAAR ‘the best-selling dedicated flatbed printer ever designed’. The Arizona 350GT is derived from the same DNA as the Arizona 250GT so our expectations are high.” Says Morris
“Our Arizona success so far has been based on the exceptional image quality combined with reliability, quick return on investment and first class support. The Arizona 350 GT builds on this platform with a maximum print speed increase of 40% over the Arizona 250 GT for those who demand the highest quality output whilst requiring additional production capacity and white ink.
“Utilised in our Arizona 200 GT / 250 GT / 350 GT family, Océ VariaDot imaging technology has been a very reliable and beneficial advancement which enables print-heads to produce ink drops of various sizes ranging from six to forty-two picoliters. This technology produces sharp images with smoother gradients and quarter-tones and dense, uniform solids. The result is near photographic image quality with sharpness only before seen at resolutions of 1,440 dpi or higher. The additional benefit to our customers is very low ink consumption, as low as 50 % less than six colour fixed drop systems.”
With its true flatbed design, the Océ Arizona 350 GT can print on a wide range of media including irregularly shaped or non-square items, heavy substrates such as glass, or materials that have an uneven surface such as wood. This is an advantage over competitive rigid-capable printers that use belt or friction-based media feed systems, as they can only print on square-cornered, lightweight materials of uniform thickness.
A Roll Media Option can be added in the factory or in the field, giving customers the ability to print onto flexible media including, self-adhesive vinyl, scrim banner, paper and backlit film without compromising the rigid printing workflow.
The flexible media roll can be unloaded at any time without interrupting rigid printing, and there is no downtime to reconfigure the system to change from one print mode to the other.
Once a rigid print is finished, the printhead assembly is positioned over the roll module and begins printing on flexible media, while the rigid material is swapped out and the new board is placed on the vacuum table and prepared for printing. When the flexible media printing is completed, the printhead assembly moves back to the table to resume printing on the rigid media.
The Océ Arizona 350 GT, along with the White Ink Option, opens the printing possibilities to more exotic print applications that command premium prices.
Océ Australia
www.oce.com.au
