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Zund UVJet 250-Combi UV-cured flatbed printer offers impressive capabilities

The Zund UVJet 250-Combi UV-cured flatbed printer has better color and overall we like this model better from the day we first saw it at DRUPA 2004. Now, in summer 2007, we have inspected it over a two day period at the main Zund demo room and factory in Switzerland.

We have also inspected the Zund UVJet 250-Combi UV-cured flatbed printer at several trade shows during 2004 and have written up a FLAAR Report which includes our list of pros and cons.

Then Nicholas returned to Germany to take notes during 6 days at Photokina trade show in Cologne. Hellmuth’s photographs have been published by National Geographic and Japanese coffee book art publishers, so he attends Photokina every time. At Photokina 2004 a diverse range of printers were exhibited; by Photokina 2006, other than Canon, Epson, and HP, virtually no printers were displayed, especially not any UV-cured inkjet printers.

Can you afford to miss a crucial tidbit of information that is in a FLAAR Report?

When you are trying to decide between the Zund UVJet 250-Combi UV-cured flatbed printer and the Zund 215, or between the Zund UVJet 250-Combi UV-cured flatbed printer and a Vutek, Dupont, Durst Rho, ColorSpan 9840 or other printer, then you definitely need to get your hands on Nicholas Hellmuth’s conclusions.

Next Prof. Hellmuth continued to compare the Zund 250 with the Zund 215 during trade shows during 2005 (and with the ColorSpan 72 UVX, Neolt, Gerber Solara UV2, Durst Rho, NUR Tempo, and Gandinnovations Jeti 3150 UV printers at SGIA trade show in Minneapolis.

But then we noticed that the Zund UVjet 250-Combi was no longer exhibited in 2005 trade shows. We checked around and learned from multiple sources that the Zund UVJet 250-Combi UV-cured flatbed printer had issues in beta-stage. Because we liked the Zund 250, we were disappointed to learn it may have been temporarily withdrawn from the market.    

Fortunately the issues were a premature use of cationic chemistry of UV ink. So Zund dropped that Sericol cationic ink and switched to a more reliable free-radical chemical formula from Sun ink. Zund also redesigned other features, and the new version of the UVjet 250 has been available since late 2006.

Where to find reliable information on UV-cured flatbed printers?

Nicholas at the Zund UVJet 250 factory visit.

If you spend hours on the Internet trying to learn about the Zund Uvjet 250-Combi, all you find are PR releases, advertisements, and other stuff by people who have never worked with UV printers.

FLAAR works hard to distinguish ourselves from trade magazines. We visit the factories where printers are manufactured. So we have reports directly from the ColorSpan factory and from the GRAPO factory.

We visit demo centers as well. So we have FLAAR Reports with factual reports from Raster Printers demo center, from Gandinnovations demo center, and from HP demo centers.

The FLAAR Report on the Zund 250 describes the interrupted status of the Zund 250, and indicates all the improvements made on the new version.

Take a look at the comprehensive series by auto-downloading the Previews.

Our FLAAR Report on the Zund 250 is being updated for July 2007 with the latest information.

It is crucial to know the true status of each UV-curable ink printer

If you are trying to decide between the Zund UVJet 250-Combi UV-cured flatbed printer and the Zund 215, or between the Zund UVJet 250-Combi UV-cured flatbed printer and a, Agfa, Eastech, Vutek, Inca, Durst Rho, or other printer, it is crucial that you know what the Zund 250 Combi offers that are not available on competing models: for example, multi-layering capabilities of white ink.

What if you wanted an Oce Arizona T220UV? What if you ordered one? This actually happened to a print shop in Minneapolis. Only after they signed the contract were they told that no Oce T220UV printer was available. Now you can obtain the actual status of the Oce printer in the FLAAR Reports.  

If is not fair when manufacturers, such as Xerox, fail to tell people when their printers are terminated, withdrawn, failed, or otherwise will no longer be available. XES did this several times: once with their electrostatic printers and then again with their oil-based ColorgrapX X2 printers: Xerox stopped production, closed down, fired most of the large format printer employees just before Christmas 2002.

Then FLAAR mentioned this. XES got very upset and said they had not stopped production, yaddi da, yaddi da. So we naively revised our comment. Later we found out we had been duped: Xerox simply wanted to sell off what was left in the warehouse and allegedly did not want anyone to really know that production had stopped.

It was a comparable story with the Kodak 5260, and again with the Encad NovaJet 1000i and Kodak 1200i. I have not yet seen a Kodak Inc press release stating there is no functioning Encad factory as of about March. Indeed not a single Encad printer was shown in the rather surprisingly large Kodak booth at PMA 2006.

And same with Xerox all over again, since Xerox rebrands the Encad NovaJet 1000i (identical printer as the Kodak 1200i; the renaming is another ruse that we do not support).

I telephoned Kodak during May, and a very honest Kodak employee said they are no longer being manufactured. Yet at a subsequent trade show, the Xerox booth personnel were not aware of this. This aged printer is still being sold in 2006, primarily outside the USA.

So if you are shopping around for a UV printer, you definitely need to get your hands on Nicholas Hellmuth’s conclusions in the FLAAR Reports. Apparently you can obtain fresher information in the FLAAR Reports than on the manufacturer’s own websites.

So to find out if the Zund 215 is still being manufactured we went directly to the factory. And there they were, several newly made Zund 215 printers in the assembly line, plus of course lots of the newer Zund 250 models. Of course these printers have serious issues facing them: namely all the new printers that have come out in the last several months (at FESPA Digital in mid-May 2006), such as the Durst Rho 600 Pictor, or the productive ColorSpan 9840, a completely new design. We visited the MacDermid factory and tested this printer on concrete slabs, wood, and many other items of interior decoration. Very impressive. But the Zund 250 offers features not available even on the Durst or Vutek: the Zund has a unique system to transport flat and rigid materials. The Zund also offers options not available on any other UV printers (not even on printers costing a half-million dollars). The FLAAR Reports have photographs and descriptions based on two intense days with this printer that followed inspecting it at numerous trade shows over a several year period (most recently at FESPA ’07 in Berlin).

There are many satisfied owners of recent model Zund printers: we interviewed one in St Charles, Missouri. Our site-visit case study of a Zund 215 is now available. In Istanbul we were in a print shop with many Gandinnovations solvent printers. He had bought an early version of a UV printer made in China. It did not work well, so he returned it, bought a Zund 215, and said he was much happier with the Zund.

So you need to match your needs, the needs of your clients, with the pros and cons of each UV-flatbed printer. FLAAR offers more than 83 titles on UV-curable inkjet printers. So you can be sure to find many reports that are crucial to give you tips, help, information, and documentation.

Get the FLAAR Premium Report Series on UV-Curable Ink Wide Format Printers : “Become savvy in UV-curable ink flatbed printers”

Samples printed by the Zund UVjet 250-Combi UV-cured flatbed printer.