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L&P Virtu UV-cured flatbed printers

Leggett & Platt Digital Technologies (L&P) first showed a prototype UV printer at DPI trade show, Atlanta, 2001. FLAAR was there, and we have kept track of these printers ever since. Below are most of the models since then. The models that are current (for 2007) are listed in boldface.

Virtu RS
Virtu RSTX
Virtu Plus, becomes the Virtu 36 in 2006
Virtu TX
Virtu FX
Virtu 7200 is new in 2005, renamed Virtu 72 subsequently
Virtu DirectUV
Virtu 130 (“available soon” status in May 2007)

L&P Digital’s Swiss branch, Spuhl (Spuehl or more correctly Spühl) exhibits the Virtu printers at trade shows in Europe. Since FLAAR personnel are tri-lingual including Deutsch we have been assisted many times in the Spühl booth in European trade fairs, but there are so many booths at a trade show that even with several assistant’s we find that a factory visit and demo-room visit is a more effective to learn about a sophisticated printer in depth (see below).

Two years ago there was a European manager of Spuhl that was very helpful and we were gearing up to update all our FLAAR Reports, but this person switched to another company and since then we have been so busy with other UV printers that there has not been time to look at the L&P or Spuhl printers in detail.

Finding adequate information on the L&P Virtu UV-curable flatbed printer is a challenge

This is a successful Fortune 500 company, but it provides less information than upstart entry-level Chinese UV printer manufacturers. Since there is essentially no independent information available we felt this would be a good place to outline how best to learn about a printer when no information is available.

This is the kind of suggestions that a professor is adept at working out: how to learn when at first no information is readily available. This is an advantage to being a research institute: we do research.

Most astute people in the industry recognize that most articles available on these printers are either outright Success Stories or close to it, and hence not much more than a packaged PR release. The best example of an unrealistic Success Story is the claim that “the printer prints on everything.” The most polite way I can put this is that this is not true and they know it. Featuring this claim is the easiest way to acquire minus points on an evaluation review.

L&P is a respected company and their Virtu UV printers have many sophisticated features, so they should be able to interest people in their printers by stressing what it can actually achieve. There should be no need to exaggerate with potentially misleading claims.

Suggested steps to learning about which UV printer to consider:

A Site-Visit to an actual printshop is essential

It is crucial to learn the pros and cons, ups and downs, weaknesses and capabilities of any UV-curable printer you are considering. So visiting a printshop that already has gone through trial and error is essential.

Just be aware that some printshops are an extension of the company demo room and PR system. So try to select the printshop yourself. You will get more reliable information if you visit a sign shop that is NOT on the manufacturer’s list of Success Stories. You don’t want a Success Story, you need to know the Failure Stories too.

So we have found our own sign shops that have DuPont Cromaprint 22uv printers. Independently we have located two places with Luscher JetPrint UV printers. I have visited two places that own the Infiniti UV printer (the best Failure Story we have yet). On my own I have found a print shop that has a Gandinnovations flatbed.

When I have another different business appointment in any city, if I don’t know who in that city has the printers I wish to see, then I ask the manufacturer who in that city has a printer. But once I get to that sign shop, I can very quickly separate fact from fiction and quickly ascertain the reality of what aspects of the printer are good, and which are weak or need improvement (I do site-visits as a side trip in virtually every city in the world that I visit).

Most sign shops prefer not to allow competing sign shop owners to visit them; for obvious reasons: UV printing is nation wide. So a printshop in Texas is competing with a print shop in Ohio for the same national account with Staples, Krogers, Ace Hardware, etc. Printshops understandably don’t want to show a competing owner/manager which printer is best.

Here again, being a research professor helps. We are independent. FLAAR has no intention of setting up a competing printshop. And many of our readers are in distant countries, so won’t be competing with the shops that we visit. In a few instances the printshops ask to remain anonymous, which we honor. We are allowed to do the interview, evaluations, and take photographs: just not identify the specific location or names.

We have done one L&P site-visit. Although it is one of their Success Story locations, we learned about the shop from having met the owner independently. We would, however, prefer to also visit other L&P owners on our own in the future. For example, we know that not all L&P owners can print on all materials: L&P ads claim they can print on everything. This is not actually correct: you can print on everything but the ink does not stick on everything by any means. So you might wish to obtain the FLAAR Reports to get a more balanced view of what the L&P printer can achieve, and what it can’t. It’s an impressive machine, but so is the Luscher: $650,000. But anyone who buys the Luscher before they obtain the FLAAR Reports is missing out on significant warnings. Our L&P report still needs more research, because of the aforementioned almost total lack of information in their web site. But at least we offer a report that is not an orchestrated one-page Success Story.

Trade show is essential at the beginning, but you need to do more too

The first step to learning about any printer is to visit a trade show booth. The advantage of a trade show is that in a single day (or best, over three days), you can see all the printers. A trade show should be visited before a finding a printshop that has the printers: you want your short-list first; this you get from trade shows (and from the FLAAR Reports).

Many readers have commented that the downside of a trade show is that “all you learn is what the company wants you to learn.” Indeed one sales rep at one of the top three UV printer manufacturers/distributors told me, “We don’t need anyone else to write reviews of our printers. We alone will tell people what they need to know. People only need to learn what we tell them.”

Wow, how in the world should we react. I was so stunned I did not say anything, except under my breath: “If the owner of this company knew what his employee just told me, he would probably be fired.” As a comment, this booth was not the L&P or Spuehl booth.

But this same company has (politely) declined to provide their User Manuals, so clearly they are not as open as is MacDermid ColorSpan. MacDermid puts 100% of their User Manuals on-line; you don’t even need to register. Just click! And the User Manual downloads immediately.

Familiarize yourself with the printer at a demo room

A demo-room visit has advantages over a trade show visit: you have more time and less hectic. And if there is a service technician in the demo room, you can learn more, since a sales rep may never have actually run the printer. Downside of a demo room visit is that you don’t have all the different brands one next to the other.

So far we have been at the demo rooms of Gandinnovations UV in San Antonio and Gandy UV in their Toronto factory.

Have been guest many times at the MacDermid ColorSpan demo room.

Spent an entire week at the Mutoh Europe demo rooms (plural, it’s a huge facility).

Have been at the Vutek demo room twice so far and am scheduled to fly back again in late June.

Have spent several days at the GRAPO UV printer demo room (they have sold over 200 UV printers in Europe and Asia alone).

Get to see how well the machines are designed and assembled by a factory visit

Mutoh Europe also allows downloads with no registration: albeit you do have to know precisely which site it is, and the downloads are shorter versions, not the lengthy versions that come with the actual printer. But at least it’s a start. Besides, Mutoh Europe provided FLAAR with every single solitary manual that we asked for, even private in-house manuals, private in-house PPTs, and other confidential documents. Mutoh Europe fully realizes that a professor only wants research material; that we do not make any of these documents available.

Gandinnovations, Agfa, Mimaki, Roland and many other companies have kindly sent their User Manuals when we requested them. Four companies politely declined. Does that suggests there is something in the manuals they don’t want us to see?

The humorous aspect is that most companies who indicate they either won’t answer questions about what printheads they use, or that won’t provide their User Manuals, they say clearly that they realize we will find access to this information anyway. It’s simple: end-users who are about to spend between $250,000 to $650,000 have a right to know what’s inside the machine they are considering. They especially have a right to know what issues are present, or what features are not available (but that are available on competing machines). The spec sheets inside the User Manuals are more detailed than the spec sheets handed out at trade show booths.

A really good way to learn about the insides of a printer, whether it will hold up longer than a few months is to visit the factory (two Chinese UV printers that we have inspected began to deteriorate within three months and had essentially fallen apart after six months; a $250,000 Chinese UV printer had so many breakdowns or parts simply wearing out that the owner was about ready to throw in the glove).

So starting in 2006, FLAAR began a program of visiting UV-cured flatbed inkjet printer factories. Since our university obviously does not cover travel to foreign countries, we either prepare a sponsored research project or simply request a training and research grant from the manufacturer. So Mutoh Europe provided an entire week of training inside their factory in Oostende. During these visits it is possible to speak to most of the design team and to the ink chemists. Visiting inside the factory is also very telling: you can see how well made the printers are.

As a result of factory visits, we show here below the front covers of all the reports that have resulted. Pending are site-visits to UV-curable printer manufacturers in Taiwan.

It takes one full day for each machine, minimum, and it helps to have an additional day for the factory visit and general discussion. Where there are additional models, then three to five days are more realistic. Might as well do a thorough job after traveling so far. Besides, 270,000 printshop owners, managers, and comparable people, worldwide, will be able to read the results. This is more than read all the sign and digital printing trade magazines put together.

We have already visited the UV-curable wide-format factories of

Gandinnovations
Grapo
MacDermid ColorSpan (many times)
Inca
NUR (twice this year already)
Sun FastJet (next door to Inca)
Sun LLC (in Russia; no relation to Sun Chemical)
Teckwin
VUTEk (three times this year already)

So there are many ways to learn about UV-curable flatbed and UV roll-to-roll printers. Since there are over 101 models of wide format UV printers from more than 45 manufacturers, it is not realistic to focus on every single make and model. We tend to concentrate on:

The printers that most of our readers ask us about.

The printers that have the most information available.

However we do try to publish at least basic discussions of each printer because sooner or later our readers ask for a FLAAR Reports. Most printshop owners and managers want to see a FLAAR Report either before they make their short-list or before they make their final decision. We get e-mails from all over the world every day asking for assistance in selecting a UV printer. Larger companies ask for consulting services as well, either asking us to visit their home office or headquarters, or they sign up for a trade-show wall-through with FLAAR, so they can learn personally from Nicholas Hellmuth at each booth that interests them. This allows them to cut to the chase and skip all the utter nonsense that floats around about improbable print speeds and claims that “our printer will print on everything.”

First posted October 9, 2007.