Active Display Group launched its massive new flatbed robot Onset UV printing systems to customers last night, and let local display printers in for a looksee after the main event.
The two new flatbed printers are an Onset X3 and Onset X1, both have an ABB robot to take the printed sheets off the bed and stack them.
Supplied by Fujifilm, the new flatbeds represent the biggest print production investment in Active's history, and come as entirely extra capacity.
Stuart Gittus, general manager at Active says, "The new Onset printers will enable us to keep ahead of the market, and will deliver what our customers want, which is top quality print in any run length on quick turnarounds. The Onsets produce beautiful print.
"We installed two together as we want to use the X3 as the workhorse and the X1 for speciality jobs and short run work."
John Mills, CEO of Onset manufacturer Inca, was over for the event. He says, "It is the biggest installation of its type in the Asia Pacific, and takes Active into the premier league of global display printers."
Ashley Playford, national sales manager at supplier Fujifilm, says, "The Onsets will pump out work at high speed on any substrate up to 50mm. The only human activity on the Active solution is to bring the pallets on and off."
Gittus was actually involved in the development of the Onsets. He was one of a select number of printers from around the world invited to participate in initial plans for the new printers.
Active’s Onset X3 is capable of printing commercial-quality up to 900sqm/hr. It runs in four pass action, with the bed not the print bar moving, in and our repeated twice in just a few seconds for a full size sheet.
Both of Active’s Onset devices use the latest Dimatix R-class printheads which fire a standard 14pl ink droplet at billions of times per second. They will also be running the new Inca tear-drop feature which allows droplet tuning from 11pl – 17pl, giving Active the capacity to further improve image quality and eliminate the need for additional light ink channels, which dramatically reduces the ink usage per square metre.
Active’s second machine is an Onset X1 designed to be future-proof, like all Onset X series, thanks to Inca's scalable architecture. This means that an Inca Onset-X purchased today is designed to grow with businesses into the future with in-field upgrades such as additional printheads and higher speeds.
Both of Active’s X series devices run the robotic automation, allowing the company to maximise productivity by stacking higher stacks of printed sheets – something that was not previously possible with scissor-lift systems. This is of major benefit in terms of machine uptime, as other technologies increase the downtime due to pauses for stack changes.
Added to this is the flexibility of being able to place proof-sheets for the operator to check during production, without having to interfere with the palletised job.
The two Onsets come as extra capacity, although the company's seven year old Agfa Tiger M Press will now be used as a back up system. Active also runs an HP Scitex FB1100 flatbed, two Fujifilm Acuity roll to rolls and a pair of high speed screen printing lines form its Mulgrave factory.
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