Product of the Week

With the launch of the Onset S20, Inca is stealing a march on its rivals in the very-high-throughput flatbed UV-cured wide-format market. The S20, which runs at 250m2 per hour, is the second machine it has launched into the sector, while most of its rivals are just bringing out their first challengers to Inca’s original Onset machine.

“We’re moving from the fast lane to the middle lane, while other suppliers are just trying to get off the hard shoulder,” says Richard Cotterill, business manager of Fujifilm Sericol Inkjet Systems Group, Inca’s partner that handles the global sales and distribution of its flatbed wide-format range.

In inkjet printing, speed can be a pretty meaningless number as there is always a trade-off between image quality and throughput. While shying away from talking in detail about dpi and number of passes or speed settings, Inca claims that the speed figures it provides are for sellable quality output in the machine’s core point-of-sale (PoS) market. For example, it claims that some rivals may attempt to boost the apparent productivity of their machines by quoting speeds using print modes where the quality wouldn’t pass muster with a paying customer. It claims that it could easily offer a mode that enabled the S20 to churn out 500m2 per hour; it would just never be used commercially.

It is a moot point, you might think. When the capital expenditure is more than £700,000, you would check the quality produced at a given speed before signing a cheque. But there have been instances where that hasn’t happened.

Filling the gap
Inca managing director Bill Baxter says that, since it launched the 600m2 per hour Onset in the spring of 2007, it has become clear that there was too wide a gap in price and performance in the firm’s range between the Onset and the Turbo. Inca uses another measure as well as square metres per hour to define productivity: beds per hour (bph), which refers to how many sheets, or in many cases sets of multiple sheets or objects to fill the 3.1x1.6m bed, can be produced per hour. The Onset can produce 125bph while the Turbo puts out 20bph – a six-fold difference. The new S20 nestles between the two at 52bph.

“You don’t have to be very bright to see we needed something in between,” says Baxter. “There are a lot of people for whom the Onset is too much of a big lump.”

While the original Onset has proved a success, making digital competitive against screen print at runs of 500 sheets, only a small number of firms have the throughput to justify the £1.5m price tag of the Onset. Inca estimates that a company needs to have a throughput of 5,000m2 per day to make the Onset pay, while the sweet spot for the S20 is 1,500-4,000m2 per day. Hence, Baxter reckons there are a larger number of firms who can benefit from the S20.

“Someone who needs the capacity to produce 2,500m2 per day needs more than two Turbos,” he says. “We hope the S20 will prove popular with Turbo users, new customers and also Onset users who need more capacity.”

Competitive offering
For companies looking for a competitive edge, the Inca claims the S20 halves the operating cost per square metre compared to mid-range flatbed wide-format machines. “The operating costs of the S20 are such that you can crucify someone operating mid-range machines,” says Baxter.

The basic architecture of the S20 is that of the Turbo, while the printing head carriage is based on the Onset, albeit with fewer printheads to keep the cost down. It retains the ability to tolerate nozzle failure, which Baxter says is an important feature that has been appreciated by Onset users. “I don’t care what people say, some nozzles will drop out,” he says.

Like all the Incas sold over the seven years since it launched the Eagle and created the market for UV-cured flatbed wide-format print, the S20 uses a moving bed architecture. Inca claims all of the 300-plus machines sold are still operating and that the technology, which HP and Vutek are using for the first time in their soon-to-ship machines, is something Inca can claim unrivalled experience with in the field.

New features have been introduced to the printing unit in the S20, including the ability for the operator to change and re-align print heads themselves, rather than relying on a service visit from an engineer.

“We see that as a big advantage for customers,” says Fujifilm Sericol’s Cotterill.

Inside the machine are 150 Fujifilm Dimatix (Spectra) S-class heads, which provide a total of 20,000 nozzles, hence the S20 name.

The S20, unlike the four-colour Onset, is available in four- and six-colour versions. In the six-colour version, the user can decide whether the additional two colours to the standard CMYK are used to print gamut extending orange and violet, light cyan and light magenta, or two whites. Inca believes that the six-colour version will prove to be the most popular configuration. As important for expanding the colour gamut as the two additional colours is the ability to increase the gloss level of the print by controlling the UV lamps during curing. The S20’s default finish is a semi-gloss, but Inca is developing the machine so that its output can be adjusted from matt to full-on gloss to best suit the application, substrate and viewing conditions.

While the Onset’s throughput made fully automated media handling a necessity, to make sure it can hit production speeds, automation is an option on the S20. Baxter believes that the level of automation specified will depend on customers’ applications. “For short runs and for exhibition work, automation doesn’t make sense, but for customers running [jobs with] hundreds of sheets it does.”

Automation options
Options include an automatic unloader and what the firm terms “three-quarter” automation, where the operator can load up a pre-load table while the previous job is printing, which is then automatically loaded onto the printer.
There is a choice of two RIPs for the S20, the Wasatch or the ColorGate. The Wasatch offers faster throughput and support for variable data, while the ColorGate offers more on-RIP colour management, which may be attractive to companies without third-party colour management and profiling tools.

At £700,000 for a fully-loaded six-colour machine with three-quarters automation and a choice of either RIP, the S20 comes in at less than half the £1.5m price of its bigger brother and is competitive with rivals from Agfa, HP Scitex and Vutek.

All bar the Agfa, which is already shipping, are due to begin commercial sales in the first half of 2009. The S20 will begin commercial installations by April 2009, with the first beta site, at an undisclosed UK location, beginning in December. The machine’s first European showing will be at the Fespa Digital show in Amsterdam from 12-14 May next year.

With eight installations of the original Onset around the world, Inca can comfortably claim that it is winning the high-speed wide-format race. With the launch of the S20, it has stolen another march on its rivals with a machine that builds on the Onset’s success, delivering much of the cost-in-use benefits without the high capital cost for firms that don’t need such high throughput.

SPECIFICATIONS

Speed 250m2 per hour (52 beds per hour)
Print area 3.1x1.5m
Automation optional three-quarter automation
RIP Wasatch or ColorGate
Colours four- or six-colour. Additional two colours can be light cyan and light magenta, orange and violet or two whites
Price £700,000 for six-colour configuration  with three-quarter automation
Contact Fujifilm Sericol 01843 866668 www.fujifilmsericol.com www.incadigital.com

THE ALTERNATIVES

Agfa M-Press
The M-Press is a unique hybrid that teams up a CMYK digital print engine with optional screen printing units from Thieme. The screen units can be fitted before or after the digital press, offering the flexibility of applying pre-coating, white, varnishes and spot colours. Agfa says the use of the Thieme gripper media transport offers superior registration of digital to screen print. Sheet size at 1.7x2.6m is smaller than the S20, but the Apogee front end benefits from Agfa’s huge expertise in pre-press workflow. (see Me & My page 37)
Speeds fast production: 553m2 per hour (133bph); standard quality: 241m2 per hour (57bph)
Size 1.7x2.6m
Automation fully automatic load and unload
Price base system £1.1m (€1.35m), autofeeder option £100,000 (€120,000), screen print station option £215,000 (€265,000)
Contact www.agfa.com 020 8231 4929

HP Scitex FB7500
Announced last month, the FB7500, which is HP’s first high-volume flatbed and its first machine to use the firm’s own X2 printhead, will begin shipping in February with general commercial availability in May. The eight-channel machine prints using CMYK with light cyan and light magenta, leaving two channels, which may be used for white or varnish. The workflow is the Onyx I-RIP Plus, which includes support for variable data and files created by third-party application including HP’s SmartStream Designer.
Speeds express mode 500m2 per hour (95 bph) 220m2 per hour; PoP mode 220m2 per hour (42bph)
Print area 3.2x1.6m
Automation optional three-quarters automation
Price £811,000 (€1m)
Contact 01344 360000 www.hp.com/go/graphic-arts

Vutek DS8300
Announced at Drupa, the DS 8300 will begin “controlled sales” in Q2 2009. Unlike the S20, the DS has the option of full automation, which it claims pushes throughput to 100 sheets per hour (575m2) compared to 50 when using three-quarter automation. The DS has a smaller format of 1.6x2.4m, which the firm claims covers 90% of work. It has eight ink channels, as opposed to the S20’s six, which will initially be configured at two sets of CMYK for speed or CMYK plus light CMYK for quality. Vutek plans to offer white, varnish and special colours in the future. The DS, which is the first machine developed by Vutek since its acquisition by EFI, uses a native Fiery XF RIP.
Speed maximum 575m2 per hour (100 bph)
Print area 1.6x2.4m
Automation three-quarters or optional full automation
Price £800,000, autoloading option £160,000
Contact 00 32 27 499 422  www.efi.com