Big Prints, Big Profits

Wide-format technology is advancing rapidly. Is it time for your in-plant to get on board?

By Linda Formichelli

You've probably heard Americans are getting bigger. But you may not have heard that our graphics are getting bigger, too.

According to CK Associates, a consultancy, the aggregate growth rate in the market for ink-jet graphics greater than 45˝ wide will be 9 percent over the next few years. And according to Deborah Hutcheson, Agfa's senior marketing manager for color systems and workflow, the graphic applications for wide-format printers have a compounded annual growth rate of 20 percent. In 2003, the engines, ink and media sold for wide-format applications are expected to produce about $23 million in retail products.

What does this mean for the in-plant manager? It means happier customers and higher profits—if you're smart enough to take advantage of the opportunity.

"You can provide a wider range of services," says Sandy Gramley, DesignJet product manager for Hewlett-Packard. "You don't want to give your customers a reason to go somewhere else."

Adds Agfa's Hutcheson, "You're looking for additional revenue streams. You're looking for ways to diversify. You're looking for ways to cut time out of the production schedule and bring in additional revenue. With wide-format, you can offer so much more to your customers."

The price difference between doing wide-format printing in-house and farming it out is also attractive. According to Amit Bagchi, director of the printer division at Canon USA, it costs under $10 to print a 3x4-foot semi-gloss poster, while a service bureau would charge somewhere between $70 and $100.

Not Your Mother's Ink-jet Printers

Remember the old wide-format ink-jet printers? They were slow, expensive-to-use machines with high maintenance costs and mediocre quality printing. Not so anymore. Today's wide-format ink-jet printers are faster without sacrificing quality, manufacturers say.

"In the new units that are coming out, the speed factor is increasing in multiple-folds," says Bagchi. "The big hindrance in the past was the speed factor—and, if you wanted speed, the compromise was in the quality. That's slowly going away."

Agfa and MacDermid ColorSpan, for example, offer devices that print bi-directionally for faster results, and Canon has expanded the base of the print head on its wide-format printers to 1.06˝ to increase speed.

The printers are also cheaper and more user-friendly.

"The technology has gotten a lot easier to use, and the cost of entry is much less than it used to be. Ink-jet has enabled that," says Agfa's Hutcheson. "You don't have to buy expensive solvent machines. Today you've got aqueous-based ink-jet engines. And they've improved in quality so much."

In the old days, changing inks was a time-consuming process. Today, wide-format printers offer clever ways of avoiding that hassle. For example, Agfa's Grand Sherpa printer comes with eight ink slots, which can be run with eight dyes, eight pigment or four of each—so it's not necessary to change inks at all. Encad's printers have half-liter reservoirs of ink "so you don't stop printing to constantly change out cartridges like the early printers," says David Hawkes, Encad's manager of product management. And HP's printers let users swap inks back and forth in one machine in about 15 minutes.

"So you can print one thing in the morning and another thing in the afternoon," says Gramley, of HP.

No more smudged prints or waiting forever for ink to dry, either. Many printers come with heaters that dry the ink quickly.

"We have a heater built into our DesignJet 5500s, which allows you to move your paper faster without sacrificing print quality," says Gramley. Another advancement in the industry is microporous media that dries instantly.

No More Hand-holding

One problem with old-style wide-format ink-jet printers was that they had to be hand-held through the entire process. Go home and let the printer work all night, and you might come in the next morning to find hundreds of dollars worth of prints ruined because a nozzle misfired. New technology solves this problem.

"All of our printers have a camera that analyzes print patterns and makes adjustments that would normally be made by the user," says Bruce Butler, director of marketing at MacDermid ColorSpan. "The scanner will analyze each and every jet and if one of them isn't firing within specification, we will map that jet out and use a different one in its place to eliminate any banding that would occur from a missing jet."

HP's printers also detect if a nozzle is out and direct the drop to a different nozzle.

When it comes to media, today's wide-format ink-jet printers print on everything but the kitchen sink. One of Agfa's wide-format offerings prints on vinyl without having to use solvent-based ink.

"We came out with a technology called the VinylJet 36, which is an aqueous ink that prints direct to vinyl," says Agfa's Hutcheson. "The printer heats its nose, which opens up the pores of the vinyl, then it goes in front of an IR heater, which fuses the ink to the vinyl."

Some wide-format ink-jet printers have the flexibility to handle all sorts of media. Océ USA offers a flat-bed printer that prints on any solid substrate—even ceramic tile or glass—up to five feet wide, 10 feet long and 2˝ thick. The material is held in place and the print heads move over the material and image directly onto it.

Another example is HP's DesignJet 120, which has a tray to hold smaller media such as postcards, but also allows the operator to attach a 24˝ roll feed, so users can create 24˝x50-foot banners, for example, out of the same machine that they use to print postcards.

All these advancements may make a wide-format ink-jet printer appear very attractive, but there are a few things to consider before buying one. First, an in-plant manager must decide what size printer will fit the bill for its operations.

"You need to evaluate what your widest production will be," says Hutcheson. Woe to the manager who buys a 42˝ machine, only to have customers come in asking for 60˝ prints.

No matter what size device is selected, one thing these printers need is space—space for the machine, space to lay out the prints, space to mount the prints, space for shipping materials. Hawkes suggests choosing a printer with wheels so it can be moved out of the way when it's not in use.

Then there's the finishing. "Are you going to do signage and banners where you might need a grommet machine?" asks Hutcheson. "Or if you're doing wide-format billboards, you might need a sewing machine."

Canon's Bagchi feels a $2,000 pouch laminator will suffice for most projects, though. "It will do mounting, plain lamination…those are fine in most cases," he says.

Once an in-plant is set up for wide-format ink-jet printing, that doesn't mean it should get stuck in the poster trap. Many managers believe all a wide-format printer has to offer is posters, posters and more posters. Other possibilities include:

• Trade show signage

• Point-of-purchase signage

• Banners

• Building layouts

• Vehicle wraps

• Signs for the company picnic

• Presentation graphics

• Prints of CAD drawings for the engineering department

"All the art in our building is done on Encad printers," adds Hawkes. "Because it's so easy to do, we change it all the time."

To sell all these goodies, an in-plant has to grab its customers' attention and let them know what it can do for them.

"Sending out a memo or an e-mail may mean nothing to them," says Hawkes. "But if you have physical samples that people can see, and you let them know you can get this in-house, they'll take advantage of it."

Just as the counter person at McDonalds asks, "Would you like fries with that?" so can an in-plant up-sell wide-format products to existing customers. If a customer is looking for handouts for a meeting, mention that the new printer can offer a large print of the meeting agenda to hang on the wall.

"Introduce them to the concept of doing large-format, and all of a sudden that becomes part of what they do when they set up a meeting," says Gramley.

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