Wide Format Imaging

When Scott Minette, president of Image Mill Inc., was looking for his next piece of equipment to add to his shop, he wanted a wide-format printer that would offer him faster high quality output with razor sharp type. Minette's pretty sure he found what he was looking for at FESPA '07 when he purchased the new Durst Rho 800 Presto flatbed printer.

Minette's wide-format shop, located in Redmond, WA just outside of Seattle, opened in 1996 and is currently a busy 23,000-square-foot operation. "We do a fair amount of retail POP work as well as fleet and directional signage. We were looking for a printer that would give us higher quality output especially with sharper type," said Minette. "We saw the Durst Rho 800 Presto at FESPA '07 and we liked the fact that it offered 'killer fill quality' and super sharp type as well as the speed we needed. After checking out the output samples, we purchased it at the show."

The printer was installed at their shop last September and has been running well for them ever since. "Our Rho unit was the second one installed in the US. The machine is serial number 8. The overall install went very smoothly and currently and we have run that machine about 1200 hours without a service call. So far its been an amazing unit for us," he reported.

The 98-inch-wide Durst Rho 800 Presto offers a first: continuous board printing for highest productivity. The machine also prints on multiple narrow boards across its full 98-inch width on materials up to 2.75 inches thick, at a top speed of 1,200 sqft/hr (draft mode). Compatible with Durst's heavy-duty roll feed/take-up accessory for roll media up to 98 inches wide and 440 pounds, it prints white ink, special-effect varnish, light and spot colors with no loss of speed. Quadro Array print head technology ensures sharp images, crisp text down to 4-point type and exceptional color density.

Minette said that they are running a lot of POP work on it and printing on mostly recycled media and substrates. "Here in the Pacific Northwest green is a very big deal. Many of our clients like REI and Nike love green printing."

He has been amazed with its performance thus far. "It has done everything we have asked it to do it. We are consistently running jobs in the 2- and 3-pass mode which is unheard of on most devices today. One other thing about the unit is that is great at it is the lack of ink purging you have to do on it. I've never seen UV press be able to run without a purging."

He also likes the white ink option. "We do have white ink and use it on about 15 percent of our projects. This machine has white first, our second Durst printer that is about to be installed will have the white laydown last option for sub surface applications. Having this available has allowed us to secure jobs we otherwise could have not taken in the past."