LFP - Large-Format-Printing

New Oce Arizona 350 GT UV Curable Flatbed Printer Includes Support for White Ink

Friday 10. October 2008 - Fast production print speeds enable higher throughput on rigid or roll media

Oce, an international leader in digital document management and delivery solutions, today announced the new Oce Arizona(R) 350 GT UV curable flatbed printer, which includes support for white ink printing and high production print speeds. The Oce Arizona 350 GT printer will be on display in the Oce booth #1041 at the Specialty Graphic Imaging Association (SGIA) Expo, October 15-18 in Atlanta, and the Oce booth #2400 at Graph Expo, October 26-29 in Chicago.

The Oce Arizona 350 GT is the next generation model in the award-winning Oce Arizona printer line. It uses UV curable inks and Oce VariaDotTM imaging technology to deliver near-photographic image quality for nearly any application. Designed as a true flatbed system, it can print on a wide variety of rigid substrates and features a Roll Media Option for printing onto flexible media.

The Oce Arizona 350 GT expands the popular Oce Arizona family of UV curable, flatbed printers, which also includes the Oce Arizona 200 GT and the Oce Arizona 250 GT printers.

White ink expands capabilities

The Oce Arizona 350 GT printer includes a White Ink Option that can be added at the factory or in the field. The White Ink Option enables under-printing on non-white media or objects, over-printing for backlit applications on transparent media and printing white as a spot color. Under-printing white ink provides a base for non-white surfaces upon which color can be added, giving users the ability to expand their range of offerings to include specialty applications. Over-printing white ink provides a diffusion layer for backlit applications that will be viewed from the unprinted side, enabling users to produce high quality backlit images for point-of-purchase applications. The ability to also print white ink as a spot color enables white features of images to be highlighted for greater effect.

Production print speeds

The Oce Arizona 350 GT printer features production print speeds up to 239 square feet per hour on rigid media and up to 188 square feet per hour using the Roll Media Option. This enables users to print nearly sixty full-sized (4′ x 8′) boards in a single eight-hour shift, or more than 1,615 square feet of flexible media.

Printer basics

The Oce Arizona 350 GT combines a true flatbed design with a separate, dedicated roll-to-roll system. It can print onto rigid media up to 49″ wide x 98″ long x 1.89″ thick. With the Roll Media Option installed, users can print onto flexible media up to 87″ wide. It uses four-color (CMYK) plus White UV curable inks and Oce VariaDot imaging technology with near-photographic image quality.

The Oce Arizona 350 GT is a true flatbed design that uses a vacuum system to hold media stationary on a flat surface, ensuring accurate registration even on multiple imaging passes. Full bleeds can be printed, saving time and labor costs in finishing. No minimum print size means just the necessary materials are used with no substrate waste. Unlike all other flatbed or rigid-capable printers, the Oce Arizona 350 GT prints along the long axis of rigid media to optimize throughput — the fewer the number of printing passes over the media, the higher the average productivity.

The Oce Arizona 350 GT joins the popular Oce Arizona family of UV curable, flatbed printers at the top of the range. The Oce Arizona 250 GT printer uses four-color (CMYK) ink and prints at speeds of up to 172 square feet per hour. The Oce Arizona 200 GT printer also uses four-color (CMYK) ink and prints at speeds of up to 101 square feet per hour. All share the same robust architecture and deliberate design that offer the Oce values of quality, reliability, productivity and user-friendliness.

Outstanding image quality, designed for productivity

The Oce Arizona 350 GT printer uses Oce VariaDot imaging technology that enables a printhead to produce dots of variable size versus printheads using fixed-droplet technology. Oce VariaDot technology creates these variable dots by dispensing ink droplets that vary in size from 6 to 42 picoliters. The ability to vary the drop size to as little as 6 picoliters produces sharp images with smoother gradients and quarter-tones. The ability to jet larger droplets up to 42 picoliters produces dense, uniform solids. The result is near-photographic image quality with a sharpness only before seen at resolutions of 1,440 dpi or higher.

In addition to superior image quality, Oce VariaDot imaging technology with four-color inks uses significantly less ink compared to six-color printers with fixed-droplet inkjet technology. This lower ink consumption results in ink savings of up to 50 percent over fixed-droplet, six-color printers.

Opportunities for applications that command premium prices

The Oce Arizona 350 GT printer can print on irregularly shaped or non-square items, heavy substrates such as glass, or materials that have an uneven surface such as wood. This is an advantage over competitive rigid-capable printers that use belt or friction-based media feed systems, as they can only print on square-cornered, lightweight materials of uniform thickness. The Oce Arizona 350 GT printer, along with the White Ink Option, opens the printing possibilities to more exotic applications that command premium prices.

A Roll Media Option can be added in the factory or in the field, giving customers the ability to print onto flexible media including vinyl, self-adhesive vinyl, scrim banner, paper and blue backed paper without compromising the rigid printing workflow. Once a rigid print is finished, the printhead assembly is positioned over the roll module and begins printing on flexible media, while the rigid material is swapped out and the new board is placed on the vacuum table and prepared for printing. When the flexible media printing is completed, the printhead assembly moves back to the table to resume printing on the rigid media. The media roll can be unloaded at any time without interrupting rigid printing, and there is no down time to reconfigure the system to change from one print mode to the other.

Beyond display graphics applications

The Oce Arizona 350 GT printer is ideal for producing a wide variety of display graphics such as event graphics, point-of-purchase displays, limited-term signage, banners, backlit and reflective rigid displays, transit advertising, and directional signage. But because of its ability to print on a range of materials not predetermined simply by “square, flat and thin” and its support of white ink, the Oce Arizona 350 GT printer can produce applications beyond the norm including custom furniture, glasswork, fixture enhancement, fine art, or nearly anything that the imagination can conceive.

Availability

The Oce Arizona 350 GT printer and the White Ink and Roll Media options are expected to be ready for customer delivery in the United States in November 2008. For other geographies, please contact your local Oce office. To drive the Oce Arizona 350 GT printer, ONYX(R) ProductionHouseTM Oce Edition software is available as an option.