Photo labs who want to compete more aggressively with screen-printers”?without sacrificing the ability to reproduce the good fleshtones and fine details that photo-lab customers expect”?may want to check out Inca Digital's Eagle H printer at the PMA show, March 2-5 in Las Vegas.
The Eagle H is a faster, higher-resolution version of Inca Digital's original Eagle digital flatbed press. Sericol Inc., the exclusive distributor of Eagle products throughout Europe and the US, has chosen the PMA show as the first photo industry event at which to demonstrate the Eagle.
The Eagle uses Sericol's UV-curable inks to print directly to sheets of rigid materials up to 1-1/2 in. thick and up to 62 x 96 in. The UV inks print well on styrene, board stock, abs, foam board, gator board, foamex, acrylic, static cling, PVC, and vinyl. By a simple flip of the substrate, Eagle can print two-sided P-O-P signs. The Eagle H can print up to 1000 sq ft/hour at a resolution of 1000 dpi. Graphics are durable for up to two years outdoor without lamination.
The first photo lab to be equipped with an Inca Digital Eagle was Cable Imaging Solutions, which produced more than 1 million sq ft of graphics in the first 11 months after the machine was installed.
“Once print quantities reached 200 or 300, we lost a lot of business to screen companies,” states Gary Cable, owner of Cable Imaging Solutions. “With the Eagle, we were able to deliver the price point, print quality and lead times that help us land new accounts.” For jobs involving up to 1000 prints, Cable has found that the cost of producing jobs is about half as much as it the job were reproduced photographically.
(Inca Digital Printers Ltd., Cambridge, United Kingdom: www.incadigital.com; Sericol Imaging, Kent, United Kingdom: www.sericol.com/imaging)