Melbourne-based events signage and wide format printer Signex/Prologica joined four other Océ Colorado users in an international print challenge titled the World of Wallcovering at this month’s 2018 SGIA Expo in Las Vegas.
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| The World of Wallcovering at SGIA, Las Vegas |
The event allowed Océ customers from around the world to test colour-matching capabilities and colour consistency when printing wallcoverings on the Océ Colorado 1640 wide format printer.
“One company from each side of the globe did a section of a specific contoured and textured wallpaper print on their Colorado machines and then sent it over to SGIA and they put up the wallpaper from five countries to show we could all produce exactly the same thing,” says Doug Pieper, owner and managing director of Prologica Digital Print & Signex Group, based at Bayswater in Melbourne’s east.
The other Colorado users represented Japan, the UK, the US and Canada.
Each user was given a real-world file consisting of a solid, deep rich orange colour and a pattern of small logos and graphics that “generally would be challenging to print precisely and accurately.” Participants received rolls of the same vinyl wallcovering material and were given simple instructions to ensure the colour management settings were consistent. The images were printed with the supplied ONYX12 media profile in High Quality mode
Océ said the final results demonstrated that the Colorado 1640 was capable of “true, real-world colour matching, with close to perfect geometric alignment from panel to panel.”
“Colour consistency is a daily battle for most wide format printers,” said Garry Muratore, product manager for Graphic Arts at Océ Australia. “We know that legacy print technologies such as latex or solvent can exhibit inconsistencies due to a range of process control issues. Even identical printers in the same location can be different. However, with the Colorado 1640, the underpinning UVgel ink technology offers precise print to print match regardless of machine location. This extends to repeatability, a job can be printed today on a Colorado and then reprinted months later with a colour accuracy never before seen in the wide-format space.”
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| Doug Pieper, Signex/Prologica |
Pieper says the Océ Colorado has given his business a significant boost in speed and quality.
“The whole industry at the moment is about speed and cost. Everybody is wanting cheaper print, they’re all wanting the best kind of print but they don’t want to pay any more money for it.
“We do event signage as well as normal signage and we’re running the machine this afternoon and tonight, putting through about 350-400 metres in the next couple of nights - that will be after we finish our regular printing - and that will be all going to Sydney next week for the Men’s Open golf.
“In the event signage business, the big issue is that sponsors never get their artwork through in time. It’s always last minute stuff, so we don’t actually go to print until about a week before the event and then we have to print and lay up all the signs. Having that sort of speed makes it do-able,” he says.
“We’ve chosen to go with a new Océ Arizona and the new Colorado and compared to our old suite of machines - which put out about six lineal metres an hour - at standard production speed, we’re now getting about 25 lineal metres on the Colorado.
“Because we run virtually 100% Océ machinery, we’ve got a pretty strong partnership and we get looked after with serviceability and everything like that. At the same time, we work with them and do a lot of testing of materials for them, so it works out really well.”
Pieper says the Océ Colorado has also opened up new markets.
“We’re in an area of business now where we compete in a level of the marketplace where traditionally we couldn’t. We can now put out better if not finer quality than the big machines and we can match them in speed.
‘We’re not in the marketplace where we get orders for a thousand sheets of this and a thousand sheets of that, but for an events signage company and wide format digital company – because we own two companies, my wife and I – we fit into a nice little niche. Between events signage, point of sale, digital wide format, we’re pretty busy. Mate, we’ll be working all weekend, we've got that much work on.”
