Mimaki Hosts UV Academy

I LOVE LEARNING about our ever-evolving printing industry through trade shows, customer visits, and open houses. I was honored to have been invited to attend the Mimaki’s UV Academy recently held in Dallas. Originally developed last year to debut the company’s JFX large flatbed products, the UV Academy quickly was expanded to include its smaller flatbed applications and now features all of the manufacturer’s UV products.

It’s educational event for existing customers as well as those interested in getting into the printing business, whether it be wide-format, smaller applications, or textile and apparel processes. Classes on maintenance, processing applications, business development, potential products to sell, etc., are offered. Customers also are invited to “test drive” the vast array of equipment designed to accommodate numerous types of printing.

New and exciting this year is the company’s new JFX200-1213 EX, which is a medium-format, UV-LED flatbed printer engineered for-small to-medium volume production. This means it offers wide-format printing capabilities in a compact footprint. It meets the needs of print service providers and in-house print shops with limited space, delivering high-quality outputs across various applications, including textured surfaces, ADA-compliant signage, and jig workflows.

The burgeoning technology of direct-to-film (DTF) printing has come into the wide-format market now as well. Also ideal for smaller companies that are just starting out, the company’s offerings are another way to provide equipment that allows users to stay within the Mimaki family with a software they already know. The firm’s software will run any of its machines.

Another very popular technology is equipment designed to produce signage for the ADA signage market, including Braille. The firm has a high-speed Braille application that speeds up the workflow. Sustainability also is of huge importance to Mimaki, with all equipment being Green Gold certified, meaning there’s very little or no VOCs coming off during the curing process. The UV inks also are developed with sustainability in mind. Finally, LED technology has changed the entire UV industry, executives say, because the old UV lamps put out so much heat that you couldn’t print on a lot of materials. LED has made it possible for many different substrates to be printed.

Mimaki offers its UV Academy several times a year at locations throughout the U.S. and Canada. For information, visit here.