Wide Format Imaging

It?s a pretty crowded market when you talk about grand-format solvent printers,? says Craig Miller, president and CEO of Las Vegas-based Pictographics. ?There are a lot of placements and very little to differentiate yourself from others in the market.?

Pictographics is an early adopter of new technology and has been beta location for various printers over the years. Miller was looking for something that would give his company a competitive advantage. He?d been kicking the tires on several printers, even tempted to purchase the JV3 250SP because of the success he had with his Mimaki garment printer, but he needed an industrial strength machine. ?There?s a big difference in size between 2.5 meters and 3.3 meters and that difference can knock you out of certain markets.?

He?d been looking at the Nur Fresco II, some of the Gandinnovations printers, and Vuteks, but the image quality and the speed of the Keundo printer piqued his interest. ?It had better looking image quality and we were test printing at speeds from 350 to 750 square feet per hour?producing prints that I could sell.?

Miller?s familiarity with Keundo as a company also tied into his decision. ?We?ve been using the Keundo liquid laminator for the past nine months and it?s a quantum leap from the Seal we were running.?

He also took a close look at the construction of the printer. ?There?s a level of elegance to the manufacturing of the printer. The design is simple and all the parts they use in the printer are first-rate: the best Panasonic motors and the best Spectra Gold printheads. It was a good combination of all factors.?

Pictographics installed the first Keundo SupraQ 3300S printer in the US early this year and it has fit perfectly into the company?s workflow. Miller plans to use it to print just about anything from banners, signs, and vehicle graphics. ?It prints nice to mesh and on fabrics. It also prints at 800x400 dpi in six color so we may even print some posters on it. Basically, anything we can do with a solvent printer we can print with this but with much better quality and greater speeds. This printer produces phenomenal print quality.?

Miller has already tracked the throughput on the machine and he?s very happy with the results. According to Miller, at 800x400 dpi, six-color in normal mode he can run the printer at 350 square feet per hour. At 400x400 dpi, six-color in normal mode, the printer was running at 500 square feet per hour. ?We?re getting great quality at nearly two-and-a-half times the speed of other printers and it?s not in draft mode,? says Miller. ?And at the 300x300 dpi, six-color, normal mode, the machine has been running from 600 to 750 square feet per hour which will be perfect for producing banners.?