Mutoh has announced a new line of high-performance variable drop mild-solvent printers, called Blizzard series. These new printers offer impeccable production output quality up to 40 m²/h and top speeds up to 80 m²/h.
Successfully previewed at the FESPA show in June, the new Blizzard wide format printers are an addition to Mutoh’s existing Spitfire Extreme mild-solvent printer family. This new Mutoh printer line consists of two models : Blizzard 65, offering a printing width of 1640 mm and Blizzard 90, offering a printing width of 2230 mm.
Mutoh’s Blizzard series printers print directly onto standard available uncoated vinyl, banner and soft signage. The machines are targeted at small sign businesses needing versatility or larger operations wanting to extend capacity while gaining flexibility. Application possibilities encompass corporate signs, stage and window graphics, backlit box signage, construction announcements, vehicle graphics, indoor graphics such as photo blow ups, floor graphics, …
The new printers feature a completely new industrial look, a new high end LCD display with blue background and white text and a large viewing window providing an excellent view on the output.
The integrated light source is an excellent help for production monitoring and facilitates maintenance operations.
The printers utilise high-performance mild-solvent ink, specifically tuned for the sign industry. The ink will resist cleaners, detergents and commercially available degreasers as good as true solvent printer inks and offers an outdoor durability on compatible media up to 3 years without lamination. For heavy duty applications where mechanical stress is involved (floor & vehicle graphics), lamination is required. The Mutoh mild-solvent inks are available in 220 ml and 440 ml cassettes. The Blizzard printers also accept Mutoh’s award-winning Eco-Solvent Ultra inks, for users wanting to use the printer in regular office environments without forced ventilation.
The Blizzard features two head sets in a mirco-staggered layout (one colour per head), allowing both speed oriented production work at impeccable print quality as well as top quality print work.
Each of the eight incorporated drop-on-demand piezo inkjet heads has 2 x 180 nozzles. Each 180 nozzle row is delivered by an independent ink channel. Using Dynamic Variable Dot Imaging Technology, each ink droplet is individually adjusted to provide high speed and high quality with low ink consumption. Each head allows print resolutions of 360 x 360 dpi, 720 x 360 dpi, 540 x 720 dpi and 720 x 720 dpi.
The new printers incorporate Mutoh’s Intelligent Interweaving print technology (i² - pronounced isquared).
Mutoh has taken a totally new approach with its i² technology. Ink is laid down in carefully optimized wave forms, not the straight lines as used by all other wide-format printers. This approach will drastically reduce or even eliminate typical inkjet printing artefacts such as horizontal banding, step mismatch banding, ink mottle, etc. In short, i² will allow bi-directional printing of all images, even the most critical jobs.
“Our new Blizzard printers are specifically targeted at sign shops looking for a flexible machine capable of producing both speed oriented production work up to 40 m²/h at impeccable printing quality, as well as top quality print work, says Arthur Vanhoutte, Mutoh Europe’s Managing Director.
“Our proprietary Intelligent Interweaving print technology enables a much more constant print quality, which apart from that is easily reproducible by the machine operator. Moreover, i² enables us to define guaranteed output quality, away from print passes and print resolutions. For the Blizzard, we have developed dedicated print modes and i² weaves. These print modes can be used depending on the type of image to be printed, the type of print job and the intended viewing distance (< 1 m / > 1 m / > 3 m / > 5 m). Unique in the Blizzard is that it is possible to get production output quality on all available engine speeds. We are convinced that the Blizzard’s 80 m²/h top
speed will be used for production of e.g. billboards”.
“Not only the image quality and printing speed of our new Blizzard printers will please many sign professionals, but also their attractive price setting as well as their high-end machine configuration, meeting the true needs of high volume users,” Vanhoutte concludes.
The new Blizzard series printers will be delivered as standard with an ink starter kit (2 x 4 CMYK) and a fully motorized heavy-duty unwinding/winding system for media loads up to 100 kg, allowing unattended roll-to-roll printing.
Mutoh Blizzard 65/90 printers have been developed and engineered at Mutoh Europe’s R&D center.
The product will be manufactured at Mutoh Europe’s production site in Belgium. Blizzard 65 and Blizzard 90 will be attractively priced at respectively 32990 € and 39990 €. The printers will become available during the second half of October 2007. Mutoh Europe will market the Blizzard printers all over Europe, the Middle-East and Africa through a wide network of authorized resellers.
The new Blizzard mild-solvent printers will be on display at all major sign industry tradeshows in Europe during the next coming months, such as Viscom Germany (Mutoh Europe booth : Hall 8A H02/H20), Finn Visual, Finland (Sept. 20-22), Printing & Pack Fair, Romania (Sept. 19-22), Viscom France (Sept. 26-28), Sign Ireland (Sept. 26-27), Print & Sign Belgium (Oct. 7-9), Sign Spain (Oct . 18-20), Viscom Italy (Nov. 8-10)
Omnitech Graphics Pty Ltd
www.mutoh.com.au/
