EFI’s two new printers for the high-end, high productivity soft signage market – the COLORS 340 and POWER 340 – can print with higher quality on a wider range of materials, with 100% penetration on both sides.
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| The new EFI COLORS 340 soft signage printer is available with up to 24 printheads, delivering greater versatility in colour configurations for soft signage POP displays and other graphics |
The EFI COLORS 340 prints at up to 9,149 square feet per hour (in a four-colour x 4 configuration) while providing unmatched colour capabilities for premium-quality soft signage, says a company press release. For higher-volume production environments, the EFI POWER 340 prints up to 16,835 square feet per hour.
Leveraging technology from EFI Reggiani’s 70+ year legacy of fabric printing, both new models have the ability to print with higher quality on a wider range of materials than other soft signage inkjet devices, with 100% penetration on both sides of the material. The printers offer added versatility and economical ink capabilities with their ability to print either direct to fabric or to transfer paper using the same inkset, eliminating the cost and downtime related to switching over inks.
“EFI, through our Reggiani division, has decades of experience bringing to market the highest quality in fabric printing in the industry,” said Scott Schinlever, COO, EFI Inkjet. “These two new printers are specifically designed to meet the most stringent quality and productivity needs in soft signage for companies that want to truly differentiate themselves in a highly competitive marketplace. With their extreme speed and reliability, the EFI POWER and COLORS printers can often replace multiple soft signage printers, producing more premium signage work with a single footprint.”
The new printers follow the market successes EFI customers have achieved with VUTEk FabriVU soft signage printers, which are among the most productive in their class for dispersed dye sublimation graphics. There are more than 250 FabriVU printers installed worldwide, many of them installations of FabriVU 340 and 340i models that give display graphics producers an opportunity to enter the soft signage space. “Building on that progress, EFI’s newest soft signage printers address the next level of production demand with higher throughput, more robust operation and even greater efficiency,” the company said.
A new level of quality in premium soft signage
The EFI COLORS 340 printer is ideal for many applications, from table throws and pop-up promotional tents to SEG backlits, flags and retail fixtures. At 11 feet wide, it has the ability to handle different fabrics up to 450 gr/m2.
“Using genuine EFI water-based CMYK dispersed dye inks, the printer gives users entrée into an ultra-premium point-of-purchase category for soft signage, producing smoother colour transitions and ultra-realistic skin tones, unlike any other soft signage printer in the market,” said EFI. “Available with up to 24 printheads, only the COLORS 340 offers greater versatility in colour capabilities to print in four-colour x 2, four-colour x 4 or six-colour x 4 configurations, as well as an eight-colour configuration featuring standard CMYK and light CMK colour inks, plus a penetrating agent.
“Signage providers can print in production, point-of-purchase (POP) or very high quality at speeds up to 9,149 square feet per hour, achieving dramatic printing with a wide colour gamut and rich, deep colour saturation.”
The printer’s 2,400 dots per inch (dpi) resolution with four level grayscale printing and drop sizes from 4 to 18 picoliters can deliver 100% penetration on both sides of the material, making it ideal for the production of national flags. Its sticky belt feeding mechanism ensures continuous tone image quality at high speeds with no wrinkle artifacts on a wide range of materials. EFI’s continuous ink recirculation system for textile printing improves ink yield, reducing the need to purge while eliminating downtime associated with printhead maintenance.
Extreme POWER meets maximum productivity needs
The new EFI POWER 340 digital soft signage printer has most of the capabilities of the COLORS 340 but at a “blazingly fast” speed of up to 16,835 square feet per hour.
The POWER 340 is also capable of printing direct-to-fabric or onto transfer paper using EFI water-based CMYK dispersed dye inks. It also employs the sticky belt feeding mechanism. The POWER 340 features up to four colours, in either four-colour x 4 or four-colour x 8 configurations.
Both printers employ an EFI Fiery proServer Premium digital front end, which means operators can take advantage of “the ultimate in colour management, job management, and powerful tools for nesting, step and repeat, scaling, cropping, barcode creation and tiling.”
Reduce your footprint, increase your output
With these two new solutions, soft signage producers can reduce their production footprint while also increasing their output by replacing multiple, slower devices with a single high-volume, premium-quality production powerhouse, according to EFI. For more information about the EFI POWER 340 and EFI COLORS 340, along with other EFI products and services for the sign and display graphics market, visit www.efi.com
