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Azero Creon Jet 8250 UV and Creon 1600 UV printers

Azero Creon Jet 8250 UV at SGIA trade show 2003.

Azero had a substantial and impressive trade show booth at two major American trade shows including SGIA 2003 and ISA 2004. But then the CreonJet 8250 UV flatbed missed the October 2004 SGIA trade show. The Azero website listed SGIA 2004 but the SGIA directory did not have either Azero or Creon included. I saw one Creon solvent-based printer in a booth that was otherwise empty (or at least I could not identify anything else). I do not know what model it was; I did not see a flatbed attachment.

The Azero president and the Azero European/US consultant were both at the SGIA 2004 trade show, but not in the kind of impressive booth that they had at ISA 2004 and SGIA 2003.

We are unsure of the relationship between Hypernics and Creon, and the relationship between Azero and Creon. Our surmise is that Creon is a brand name (a model designation). Azero seems to be the distributor for the USA. A report in an IMI conference as well as an article by Stewart Partridge suggested that Hypernics in Korea was the manufacturer of the Azero CreonJet 8250 UV printer. The only thing we know about Hypernics is a posting on a user group where Hypernics states they “are the wide format UV printer manufacturer” without giving any other information. I have not listed Hypernics prominently in any FLAAR Report because they were not very visible at any American or German trade show.  

SGIA 2004 showed that the competition in UV-cured flatbed wide format inkjet printers has changed forever with the introduction of the ColorSpan 72UVR printer at below $100,000. As a result of this low price, the ColorSpan replaced the Zund 215 as an entry-level for sign shops.  Then the ColorSpan 5440uv series replaced the model 72UVX.

Samples by the Azero Creon Jet 8250 UV printer.

Although Korean UV manufacturer falters; Chinese UV manufacturers march forward

Chinese printers had a substantial presence at SGIA 2003 and ISA 2004. But most Chinese UV-printers were invisible at SGIA 2004, unless they had an American partner such as Flora with DuPont. Teckwin was one of the few Chinese printer manufacturers showing a UV-flatbed in a booth under their own name. The DGI, Dilli, and Eastech appeared to be more advanced and sophisticated: Korean and Taiwan printers are still several years ahead of the Chinese copies.

We hope to learn more about the fate of Azero Creon and other Korean companies at SGIA-DPI 2006. In the meantime you can read about all the major UV-curable ink flatbed printers in the FLAAR Reports on UV-printers. We cover all the Chinese UV printers, all the UV-curable printers made in Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and the US.

The first model from IP&I, their Revo, was their first descendant from their heritage from Hypernics. I have seen the IP&I Revo still printing during a site-visit case study in Korea in summer 2006. At ISA 2006 we saw the new IP&I Cube 260uv printer that is the second result of the engineers and staff who left Hypernics and formed a new company (IP&I). Hypernics itself never exhibited in the USA or Europe under their name and ceased to exist in 2004.