John’s Print Centre is the first Australian printer to install the high volume Océ Arizona 6170 XTS as it switches from screen to digital in search of faster turnaround.
Managing director Shane Bobrige says there is ‘no question’ digital has advantages over traditional screen printing, which it has used for 30 years.
“It eliminates some of the more demanding, time-consuming processes involved in the make ready process,” he says.
“Digital wide format is quick, clean and fast, and coupled with the quality which can be achieved the argument for transition is quite compelling.”
The Adelaide printer says he chose the Arizona 6170 XTS after rigourous research, seeing it in action at a special product preview at Océ’s Vancouver R&D centre.
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Canon says the 6100 series of flat-bed printers is a high-productivity, high volume range specially designed for sign, display and point-of-sale production of more than 30,000sqm of rigid media each year.
Océ chief executive Attilio Mainoli told ProPrint it is the company’s biggest flatbed ever and is in a ‘good situation’ to make many sales to Australian printers looking to trade in multiple smaller flatbeds for a big one.
“The Australian market is more similar to America than Europe in that it has a smaller number of bigger cities with more printers with the volume to support the machine,” he says.
“It is designed to have consumables consistent with other Océ products to make upgrades easier, so using it as a primary machine would be a good setup.”
Mainoli says the 6100 series has new features that could be included in the next round of Arizona flatbed updates, ‘now that the hard work is done’ to develop them.
Canon says the Océ 6170 XTS features two independent printing zones, each with its own vacuum system, so that one board can always be staged and ready while the other is being printed – essentially providing non-stop production.
The two zones can be combined into one extra-large area to enable prints of up to 2.5m x 3.05m, with the vacuum table keeping media and objects stationary during production to ensure print precision.
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