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Mutoh Zephyr launched at FESPA Digital in Geneva
There are now more than 46 manufacturers of UV printers.
There will be more at DRUPA (even more than exhibit, one new Swiss company will be off-site exhibiting their UV printer; and two more Korean manufacturers are not yet large enough to be at DRUPA).
Agfa now has it’s own :Anapurna 100, not made by Mutoh Europe and not made by Dilli (all the Agfa :Anapurna XL, Anapurna Mv, etc are made by the capable Korean manufacturer Dilli).
The Mutoh Zephyr uses Xaar 760 Omnidot heads. The first model is a hybrid system (no transport belt). Hybrid technology is used by Keundo, ColorSpan, Gerber Solara, Neolt, Milano (OEM from Neolt).
The difference is that the Mutoh has a more sophisticated roll-feeding system than entry-level competitors. I would rate the Mutoh Zephyr as mid-range (in other words, significantly more advanced in technology than cheaper systems). For example, there is a double-dancer system at the back and a dancer bar at the front too. As soon as it may be possible to visit the factory then I can observe additional sophisticated features.
The tentative price is 100,000 Euros. Production will begin during late summer for delivery by end of the year. This printer has been in development for many years so this machine will unlikely have the issues of first-time platforms such as the Gerber ion. Mutoh Europe has plenty of experience.
It is noteworthy that Mutoh beat both Seiko and Roland.
Roland and Seiko have still not shown their own UV printers (and will miss DRUPA).
So the point is, how in the world is a printshop manager and printshop owner to decide which of these printers is any good?
Look at the DuPont Cromaprint 22uv; it was a failure and caused hardship for most people who made the mistake to buy it. Fortunately those people who read the FLAAR Reports were wary from the beginning.
Same with Luscher: even “made in Switzerland” was no help for unfortunately printshops that made the mistake to select this half-million dollar lemon.
But the excess number of new UV printers makes it a challenge for FLAAR to keep up, especially when our university continues to cut funds and phase out any program that does not have support from industry. So since 2007, most of our tests have been supported by industry in the sense it’s not realistic for us to have 27 UV printers at our university. It’s more realistic to visit the demo rooms and do our testing there and in the factory.
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| Angle view of Mutoh Zephyr UV Hybrid at Fespa Digital 2008 |
We also do site-visit case studies, of the printers in actual printshops. But this is not realistic for a brand new printer: it exists only in the manufacturer’s trade show booth and demo room back at their factory or headquarters.
So as soon as the new Mutoh UV printer is available to study at it’s demo room, we will issue a FLAAR Report. In the meantime, we have reports on over 50 other UV printer models from over 46 manufacturers.
First posted April 1, 2008.
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Dilli NeoPlus |
| HP Scitex XP5100 and HP Scitex XP5300 |
| HP Scitex XP2100 and HP Scitex XP2700 |
| HP Scitex FB6100 |
| L&P Spuhl RS |
| Sun FastJet |
| RIP Software |
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| Caldera RIP software |
Interesting inks & Alternative Inks |
HP latex ink |
UV-Curable ink, OEM (in preparation) |
UV-Curable, third-party ink |
| Encres Dubuit (others in preparation) |
Fine Art Photography Giclee & Proofing (on other FLAAR sites)
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Epson 4880 |
Epson 7880 |
Epson 9880 |
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Most of our updates for 2008 onward are in FLAAR Reports in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. It is more efficient for us to make new information available in PDF format. So if the web page itself is not updated, check out www.wide-format-printers.NET to see if the printer, RIP, or other subject is covered in an update in a PDF download.
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