Screen Truepress Jet2500UV curable combo-style flatbed inkjet printer

If you type Screen Truepress Jet2500UV into Goggle, you get page after page of official press releases. Virtually every web page repeats the same blurb.

We make the effort to look at all aspects of a printer, even the back. You can notice that the ink tanks are comparable to those on Inca printers, as would be expected since Dainippon owns both "Screen" and Inca Digital. But this combo is a Japanese-Screen concept. Inca Digital still makes just dedicated flatbed systems.

But if you seek meaningful documentation on most UV printers, actual facts, there is either zilch, or a pseudo-review (known in PR jargon as a “Success Story”). It’s the same when you try to learn something meaningful about L&P Virtu UV printers: not much meat. Just superficial Success Stories.

This is why FLAAR dedicates so much energy to evaluating and reviewing UV curable inkjet printer equipment: because otherwise significant information from an independent reliable source is unavailable.

As a result, last year over 270,000 people came to this large-format-printers.org web site to learn about UV and solvent printers. This year over 301,000 people will read these pages. This is not a hit count (hits are in the millions); we count only actual visitors. And they read us from every country on earth. When I lectured in Korea on UV printers over 100 print shop owners and managers came to learn what UV printers I had experience with. But it’s not realistic to have experience with a UV printer unless we have two days in their demo room. Indeed at Mutoh Europe I was guest of their management for an entire week.

FREE REPORTS

The Japanese and European staff of the Screen booth were cooperative in making the FLAAR team feel welcome (Hellmuth and Sacayon, director of projects who was doubling as a photographer at FESPA, taking photos for the official FESPA Daily News, published by SIP magazine).

But since this was a prototype it was not possible to look inside, and therefore there is no FLAAR Report whatsoever. We can produce an evaluation, review, and recommendation only when we fully understand a printer.

This is why en route to FESPA ’07 we spent two days at the Zund headquarters inspecting the Zund UVjet 250-combi. Prior to that I was in Israel for an entire week, guest of NUR Macroprinters, and while near so many high tech digital imaging companies I also visited Objet Geometries, HumanEyes, Kata, Leaf digital cameras, and CreoScitex scanners (now part of Kodak).

Japanese Quality

I have lived in Japan (I was Visiting Professor at Japan’s National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku), Seni Expo Park, Suita, Osaka). Indeed this is where I learned about digital imaging (circa 1996). Had my first experience with a digital camera in Japan: a circa 3-megapixel Kodak DCS 420 camera that cost $28,000 and had to be run via a quirky SCSI card with a computer.

These months in Japan taught me a lot about Japanese quality, especially in printing and publishing. Several major books by Japan publishers including Shogakukan, include photographs from the FLAAR Photo Archive of pre-Columbian art of Mesoamerica (see www.maya-archaeology.org).

Epson, Mimaki, Mutoh, Roland and Seiko have been successful Japanese manufacturers of wide-format-inkjet printers. Indeed HP had to turn to Seiko when HP found sales of water-based printers waning and sales of Seiko’s ColorPainter 64S taking over.

I dumped my three Leica R-series cameras a decade ago and have used only Nikon and Canon cameras since then. Thus I have first hand experience with products designed in Japan (though I suspect recent camera lenses are assembled in China).

So it is to be expected that Japanese companies will continue to enter the UV market. As long as they are completely designed and manufactured in Japan (and not in China) their quality will be respected and acknowledged.

The Screen Truepress Jet2500UV printer is professional, the design is attractive (less clunky than brands even in Italy; this is a high compliment, it’s more attractive than even Italian designed UV printers).

So when you compare prices, factor in the reality that Made in Japan stands for quality, but it won’t be cheap (like made in China).

So it will be nice when it is possible to create an evaluation and review and offer ratings on the Screen Truepress Jet2500. This will require a visit to headquarters of Screen and/or demo center, since there is not time or space to do a full evaluation at a crowded and busy trade show.

Why was this printer not shown at GraphExpo or VISCOM Germany?

The FujiFilm booth at GraphExpo did not have either the Screen Truepress Jet2500UV or the Screen Truepress Jet650UV flatbed UV-curable inkjet printer.

Hopefully at least one will be at SGIA ’07 in late October.

Of course the question is, is a combo-style printer viable today at all?

Combo-style flatbeds have a conveyor belt (“transport belt”). But they skew or otherwise get bent out of shape on many printers (GRAPO Octopus being the most notable in this unfortunate respect). But other brands have distortion problems with their transport belts. Or if the belt itself is not askew, when you try to print a heavy dedicated flat panel, such as an MDO board, it skews.

More and more companies are moving away from hybrid or combo style flatbeds to dedicated roll-fed and/or dedicated flatbeds. The Gerber Solara ion is a good example.