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L&P Virtu HD8 UV printer with Spectra M Class MEMS printheads

The L&P Virtu HD8 UV printer with Spectra M-Class silicon MEMS printheads is precisely the kind of high-tech digital imaging technology that I am interested in. As a professor, this is the kind of impressive UV-curable printer that I would enjoy learning about (especially since I lecture to screen printing owners and managers around the world).

In the past years, L&P made strongly built machines but their print quality was surpassed by printers made in Korea and elsewhere. Now the L&P Virtu HD8 UV printer with Spectra M-Class Silicon MEMS printheads offers a quality that catches up with the competition: and exceeds with even better print quality.

L&P Virtu HD8 UV printer Spectra M-Class Silicon MEMS printheads

L&P Virtu HD8 printer showed at SGIA '07

Leggett & Platt Virtu UV printers

Samples printed by L&P Virtu HD8

Leggett & Platt, the parent company of L&P Digital Technologies, is such a large and financially successful company on it’s own (the largest mattress producer in the world, for a starter), that its printing division is to some degree subsidized (sort of as was DuPont’s failing attempt to get into UV printers with its Cromaprint 22uv).

Whereas DuPont made the serious mistake of trusting a Chinese manufacturer, L&P manufactures in the US and in Switzerland (Spühl). DuPont’s UV program went belly up as a result of misunderstanding the engrained culture of low-bid manufacturing that proved impossible to turn into a quality product in China.

But at the last several trade shows I have not even stopped at the L&P booths. Too many other booths are more inviting, more engaging, more dynamic, and offer more information. Plus at several trade shows the L&P Virtu booth was so far on the edge that I never reached it until the last day.

The Gandinnovations booth is like a club: all their key people are there, their ink chemists, their Latin American marketing & sales people, their key European distributors, the two owners (James Gandy and Hary Gandy). You can go into the Gandy booth and within minutes have a meeting directly with James Gandy personally, or Hary Gandy personally, or their head ink chemist (Clem Sison).

At HP you don’t meet the CEO (nor would this be expected) but meetings can be arranged with key people relatively easily. In fact they usually remind me even before the trade show and make sure that I am present at their special events. This does not keep me from noticing the systematic problems with their X2 MEMS-like printheads, but at least I spent time in their booth and at their events.

At the Durst booth the head executive officer from Europe is readily accessible to discuss each and every aspect. I recently spent a week at the two Durst factories in Lienz and Brixen. At the ColorSpan booth their product manager, tech support managers, and key marketing managers are available at any and every hour to ask questions of. Plus, you can ask (and expect answers) to point blank questions about tech support, about what features have been improved based on teething pains of newly launched models.

Dilli executives are readily available too. At Agfa I got a telephone call at 9:30 am and had two key managers for a private 40-minute meeting within 5 minutes. At Gerber, even at the end of the show on the last day and last hour, their Gerber “ion” product manager was patiently answering my questions for an hour on their curious cationic ink.

So even with four days at SGIA ‘07, there are 45 manufacturers of UV printers, over 101 models, and even though not every manufacturer is present at SGIA, even though I arrived a day early (set-up day before the show opens), and even though every evening I had a minimum of three hours of meetings with UV printer manufacturers, there simply is not time to cover each brand and model.

Another reason that I spent the limited time available at the other manufacturers was that I heard from several sources rumors that L&P Digital was looking for either a buyer or an OEM manufacturer. Lüscher’s wide-format UV program went bust earlier this year (their printer was simply too large and unwieldy and had issues with UV curing). Zund is now going to concentrate on their successful cutters and no longer build and sell UV printers. And DuPont’s entire printer division simply is being downsized in the process of going out of direct sales of UV and textile printers. If there is only time to concentrate on the companies that are moving ahead, I will tend to skip those companies that are asking for someone to buy them or manufacturer their printers for them.

I have followed L&P’s progress since it’s printers first appeared at the DPI trade show in Atlanta (2001?). We do get readers who ask our opinion about L&P printers, so as soon as it is practical to visit the L&P factories in the US and Switzerland we will be glad to add coverage, but presently the action in the world of UV-curable inkjet printers is in Korea, China, Japan, and Europe.

But it’s nice to see that the L&P Virtu HD8 is offering top quality to catch up with the competition. Its use of Spectra M-Class MEMS printheads is also something I will be interested in.

Other UV-cured inkjet printers using Spectra M-Class Silicon MEMS printheads?

L&P Virtu HD8 UV Printer

The Raster Printers Daytona T600UV is the first UV-cured flatbed inkjet printer to use Spectra M-Class Silicon MEMS printheads. This small-footprint machine, manufactured by ISI (INX) in Alabama, costs $80,000. I have already made two trips to the Raster Printer headquarters in California and stop at their booth usually several times a day.

I also bring clients by to visit the Raster Printers booth (since there are so many booths to see that a printshop owner or a corporate manager that is looking for partners might not know which booths to concentrate on). FLAAR offers a “walk-through” of every trade show to clients: we take them, personally, up and down every aisle and introduce them to the CEOs, president, top managers, and/or key technical, marketing, or sales personnel (per interest of our clients).

But is L&P Digital Technologies changing?

At SGIA ’07 people were already asking whether L&P would exit the UV printer market. Then in December ’07 there was an announcement that L&P, the parent company of L&P Digital Technologies would exit non-core businesses. The question is what will Spühl do in Switzerland? They manufactured L&P Virtu RS25 printers there.

What about people who bought an L&P printer recently? We have heard what kind of treatment print shops received who made the error of buying a Lüscher JetPrint after Lüscher had to pull out: Lüscher was selling used printers at low prices just to get them sold. But what about tech support of a discontinued UV printer?

DuPont is out.

Zund is out.

Lüscher’s UV printers failed.

And now L&P? At ISA 2008 most industry analysts repeated the common rumor based on L&P parent’s statement that they would divest themselves of non-core businesses. But… none of the wide-format printer analysts seemingly realized that the Virtu UV printers is precisely a core business, and hence is not intended to be divested.

At Graphics of the Americas ’08 I had dinner with the recent purchase of an L&P Virtu HD8 printer; it will be installed by late March 2008. He would not have bought any printer from a company that he thought might be going out of business. So clearly there is some mis-understanding about L&P Digital Technologies. We are keeping track.

At the ISA ’08 booth of Leggett & Platt Digital Technologies it was possible to have a good discussion with Richard Codos (Executive Director, North American Development) and Ed Morris (Director of Sales).

With Agfa there are two totally different stories floating around: one is that Agfa is dropping out of the UV printer business totally. Another is that Agfa is about to offer new products. Indeed Agfa will offer their rebuilt :Anapurna 100 and a new :Anapurna XLS. So rumors tend to be wrong (except about DuPont).

The problem is that some companies lie. XES (Xerox Engineering Systems) lied because they claimed they had not closed their company when they were dropping out. DuPont denied it was dropping out and claimed the ink in the Chinese-made printers was “DuPont” ink. Current understanding is that the ink was not actually made entirely by DuPont. And the printers were obviously not manufactured by DuPont either. So please excuse us if we are skeptical after being lied to by product managers over and over again.

Fortunately there are many honest and ethical people in the inkjet business. Zund indicated clearly when, where, and why they were pulling out. In distinction, Lüscher simply let it’s UV printer program evaporate but that did not keep someone from selling a used Lüscher JetPrint to a shop in the UK or Europe, who was very irritated when he learned that tech support on an abandoned UV printer was not very impressive.

I was present at DPI trade show in 2001 when the first L&P UV printer was unveiled. I have watched these printers improve (especially after a short-lived and unsuccessful alliance with 3M, whose ink in those years was not considered adequate by end-users). Now the L&P no longer uses 3M ink of that kind, and the printers are improved. The Spühl version is obviously “Swiss made quality.” I lived in Switzerland for three years so I have experienced Swiss quality. I have spent two days in the Zund factory too.

Last week I spent an entire day visiting the Spühl factory in Switzerland. This was very productive as it was possible to learn about their past, present, and future.

As soon as it is possible to visit the L&P factory in Florida we can obtain more information and resolve the question of the situation with the L&P Virtu printers. So far my understanding is that all rumors are mistaken (misinterpretations), and that both L&P Digital Technologies in the US and Spuhl in Switzerland are fully in business. Indeed I was at FESPA Digital last week, and the Spuhl booth looks very much successful and “in-business” just like the booth of Durst, etc.

Most recently updated April 07, 2008.

First posted November 2, 2007. Updated Feb 19, 2008, March 7, 2008, april 1, 2008.