Brother has entered a new market with the latest launch of its WF1-L640 latex wide format printer, designed for various applications including banners, drawings, window graphics, storefront signage, trade show graphics, vehicle wraps and outdoor advertising.
Brother took to Fespa Munich to launch the new printer.
The move is part of its Vision 2030 campaign which it launched in April last year, confirming its focus on expanding industrial printing.
In the fiscal year 2022, the industrial area was one-third of Brother’s total revenue. The target for 2030 is to make it half of the total revenue.
Brother director of industrial printing business Heiner Rupperath said, “Having our Vision 2030 in mind and the strong investment focus into the industrial business area, it was a matter of time to launch our first large wide format printer with latex inks. The WF1 is based on our advanced printer technology with benefits in better printing quality even with high cap distance printing.
“The strong points of the new Brother printer are also less waste and maintenance due to internal circulation in the front end module, compact printhead considering the high number of nozzles and excellent total cost of ownership.”
The WF1 enables printing on a wide range of coated and uncoated media up to 1,615mm printable width and a maximum print resolution of 1,200dpi.
Using the print head technology combined with ink chemistry, Brother has developed an eco-friendly, weather-resistant, water-based ink with GreenGuard Gold certification.
“Our water-based ink is safe to use, for example, in restaurants or educational institutions. The ink is packaged in 700ml ink pouches that minimise the cartridge waste,” the company said.
According to Brother, the ink offers a larger colour gamut using CMYK only, achieving a high depth and an excellent print result with expressive, high intensity and saturation colours.
The print heads are arranged diagonally and provide an efficient printing process in which the optimiser is applied first, followed by the CMYK inks, generating a high-quality and high-resolution print up to 1200dpi.
Brother said piezo printing ensures better quality, as it can be controlled more precisely, achieving sharper and grain-free results with smoother tonal transitions. Based on the piezo printing process, the Brother print heads have a longer durability and service life.
The company has also used FESPA as a platform to announce the expansion of its Brother GTX600 direct-to-garment printer.
Brother’s product manager for textile printing Tim Rählert said, “We are constantly developing new technologies which help serve our textile industry using the most innovative ideas and considering customers’ feedback and needs.
“Today, we are presenting an even wider colour gamut to our customers by introducing our new GTX 600 Extra Colours with orange and green, offering more vibrant and detailed print results.
“The extra colours version is based on our well-established brother GTX 600 direct-to-garment printer, which has been further refined. To ensure a continuous printing operation, the printer has seven ink tanks CMYK, white, orange, green, and six industrial print heads with internal cooling fans.”
The printer has plates in different sizes (up to 24 inches) to handle a wide range of textiles and creative possibilities. It can adjust the plate height automatically to create an optimum distance between print heads and textiles.
The inks are filtered and degassed to guarantee optimum print quality up to 1,200dpi.
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