Zaventem, Belgium – 23 September 2014 – EFI™ announced that Gravure Pub added an EFI VUTEk® GS3250r roll-to-roll printer to meet the needs of its high-profile customers. They include global companies such as Coca-Cola, Danone, LG, Mobilis, Nestlé Water, Procter & Gamble, Renault, and Samsung, as well as prominent national and local brands.
“Given the level of demand from our customers, and the importance for them of having consistent quality, but also, and above all, complete reliability, we have chosen to invest in UV technology, and without hesitation in an EFI VUTEk GS3250r printing press. This choice will allow Gravure Pub to meet tight deadlines and ensure quality without compromise,” said company founder Hicham Briksi.
The 3.2-metre VUTEk GS3250r, equipped with a Fiery® digital front-end, has six-colour, true 1000-dpi printing capability and a faster printing mode for exterior applications, which allows the company to accept larger volumes of work for projects such as advertising banners or billboards. Additional strengths include double-sided printing, automatic printer head cleaning and the ability to print on a wide range of flexible substrates. “The results are clearly positive. Productivity combined with quality printing have allowed us to win numerous customers and important contracts. New projects? They’ll always be with EFI!”
Gravure Pub specialises in displays, outdoor signage and digital printing. The company employs over 130 people with a turnover of three million euros. Located in Tlemcen, Algeria, the company also has two operations in Algiers and Oran to serve customers over a wider region.
“We are also able to provide our customers with complete service,” explained Briksi. “Our expertise goes from design to manufacture to finishing and installation for any advertising medium.”
Always striving to provide the widest possible options for its customers, Gravure Pub has chosen to integrate many additional types of printing into its services. In addition to the vast number of finishing solutions available, the printing company has also equipped its workshops with high-frequency welding machines to offer very large formats that are not limited by the width of the printers. Gravure Pub also offers digital eco solvent printing for long-term communication applications (interior and exterior), POS, industrial printing, and both standard and neon signs.
EFI Redefines Tile Printing with Cretaprint Innovations at Leading Ceramics Show Tecnargilla
Provides entire ecosystem that includes printers, new EFI ceramic inks, advanced ink system and new EFI Fiery proServer for absolute colour control
Tecnargilla, Rimini, Italy – 22 September 2014 – EFI™ is introducing a line-up of innovative printing systems that promise to redefine ceramic tile printing. Advanced electronics, a newly engineered ink system, new EFI ceramic ink sets, automatic printhead cleaning technology, more compact design and a new vacuum system are among the innovations on display at Tecnargilla. EFI is also demonstrating a new release of the EFI Fiery® proServer giving the industry the first complete colour management system for ceramic tile printing. EFI’s new Cretaprint™ systems will be on display at Tecnargilla in Pavilion C1, Booth 081. EFI is also showing samples of tiles printed using its EFI Wide Format H1625 LED curing printer.
New EFI ceramic inks
The introduction of EFI ceramic inks brings the power of the world’s leading developer and manufacturer of digital UV-curing ink to the ceramics industry. EFI Ceramic inks provide intense colour within a wider colour gamut. Colours include dark blue, reddish brown, yellow, golden yellow, beige, pink and black. Special effect inks include sinking ink, extra white, matte glaze, glossy glaze and lustre.
EFI ceramic inks, combined with the Cretaprint printer and Fiery colour management, produce the best quality ceramic products with low ink consumption.
Cretaprint printers
Being shown for the first time at Tecnargilla is the new Cretaprint C4 printer. With a width up to 745mm, the competitively priced new C4 engine offers a more compact footprint and is 30% lighter. A new user interface and advanced nozzle plate cleaning system are among its additional features. The easy-to-use product lowers maintenance costs and energy consumption.
The Cretaprint C4 printer includes a number of innovations such as:
- A new vacuum system working with higher pressure for greater efficiency without affecting quality.
- A compact frame holding eight individual bars that can be pulled out if required, making all the components accessible for maintenance tasks.
- Bar separation optimised for a highly-efficient steam and mist extraction without compromising printing quality.
- Automatically adjustable height of both the vacuum bars and the jetting distance.
- New cleaning system ensuring a longer printhead life.
- The ability to detect and correct missing nozzles.
- A newly designed transport system ensuring greater accuracy with precision alignment.
- Also on display are the new Cretaprint C3+ and Cretaprint P3+ printers with widths up to 700mm and 1400 mm wide respectively.
Additional EFI enhancements introduced at Tecnargilla include:
- New ink System
The new ink system was designed to produce the highest accuracy under any printing conditions. A simpler design reduces the number of pumps, which enables different ink flow rates. This means operators can use the same ink system with different (multiple) print heads. A reverse flow capability allows automatic print head cleaning to avoid jams or shuttering. The system also allows faster and easier refilling without spillage, producing less waste.
Plus, fully extractable ink tanks make ink changes easier and faster. Anti-settling tubing design protects the print heads. EFI’s vision system can detect any non-functioning nozzle and automatically compensate for perfect printing quality.
- New EFI electronics offer greater flexibility, enable faster image upload and allow the user to modify settings on the fly for small re-adjustments during production.
- Enhanced user interface
- The new user interface offers the convenience of a touch screen. Navigation is friendly, and basic functions are permanently on display. All main functions are accessible in one or two clicks.
- Tone Adjustment System (TAS)
- TAS is based on an intuitive interface that guides the user through the process of study and application of changes in tone or intensity to apply to a model. These features enable adjustments or variations on existing models in the system without use of external additional software or extensive knowledge in colour management.
- Tile thickness laser detector A dual laser detects both the position and the thickness of each piece, automatically adjusting for the height of each tile.
- Synchronization This allows two separate Cretaprint engines to be synchronized for printing.
- Double tile printing Double Tile Printing allows simultaneous printing of two tiles of different formats with different designs
- SMS alerts This new kit allows users to track and send any incident warning in real time to users’ mobile devices.
- Cretavision™ relief recognition Cretavision takes the tile’s relief pattern into consideration and fits any design to the tile’s relief, regardless of the order in which the tiles enter the system.
EFI Fiery pro Server v 1.4 Digital Front-End
The Fiery pro Server gives all Cretaprint systems the industry’s first complete colour management system for ceramic tile printing. It ensures accurate and consistent colour quality while lowering ink consumption. The Fiery also allows automatic creation of a special effect channel for digital decoration as well as automatic white ink-channel generation for dark coloured glazes.
“Tecnargilla is the ceramics industry’s most important event of the year, and EFI’s teams are excited to bring so many innovations to the tile manufacturing market,” said EFI CTO, Ghilad Dziesnietik. “We are combining EFI ink expertise, colour management and the best-in class workflow software in the graphics arts world with our market leading line-up and the industrial robustness of Cretaprint ceramics printing technology.”