Reports

Reports

April 2006

Site-Visit Case Study:

What is it Really Like to Have a Lüscher

JetPrint UV-Cured Inkjet Flatbed?

Nicholas M. Hellmuth

Reports 1In late March it was possible to have a visit to a print shop with a Luscher JetPrint UV flatbed printer. I was in Athens, presenting at a UV-workshop organized by Materia Grigia.

I appreciate the efforts made by everyone to facilitate this visit, especially since it was on a weekend.

This successful print shop has an enviable arsenal of heavy-duty printers:

• Gandinnovations Jeti 5-meter solvent ink printer.• Gandinnovations Jeti 3.3 meter solvent ink printer• Scitex Vision solvent ink printer• Durst Lamba photo printer

They also have many smaller solvent ink printers, including several Mimaki JV3 printers that appear to have been worked to death. They looked as though they had been stripped for spare parts. How-ever they had already ordered a Mimaki JV5, sight unseen, so clearly they not only like the Mimaki printers but also they find a printer of this size and print quality is still needed even with all the other larger production-oriented solvent machines they also already have.

The Luscher was installed at the end of August 2005 and was producing serious output by September 20th. This three-week trial-and-error period is to be expected of any large, complex technology, espe-cially a printer as new (and unfinished) as the JetPrint 3530. Part of the delay was seemingly due to resolving issues in printing white, and in general resolving the situation with the curing system.

I should emphasize that the head of the printer technology aspect of the company is pleased with the results, has the highest faith in Swiss technology, and gives high ratings to the Luscher and its tech support. So mention of the glitches are because FLAAR is a university institute, and you would expect a professor to need to learn both sides of the story, namely the pros and cons of a printer, specially if it costs well over half a million dollars.

Within three months of this site-visit, Luscher had already made dramatic changes to its UV lamp curing system, which shows two facets of Luscher: this printer is still in beta stage development. And Luscher is intent on getting things right. The downside is that early buyers are beta testers and suffer consequent delays and discomforts. But this particular buyer knew in advance that the printer was not perfectly finished. Of course the reality of this does not really sink in until what you are printing turns out to be incomplete cured.

Eventually we would consider returning and updating this evaluation (if the LED pinning system is installed on this machine in Athens).

Reports 2The Basics

1. Brand name, model?

Lüscher JetPrint 3530 UV.

In proper Swiss-German it is spelled Lüscher; in proper English this would be transcribed as Luescher, because most American laser printers can’t handle accents such as the umlaut. Of course Luescher is pedantic, so usually it is just written Luscher.

Although I lived in Switzerland for three years, I have seen too many provincial laser printers on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean that could not handle any accent at all, so we spell it Luscher: no accent and no transcription.

2. What is the nature of the manufacturer? Is this company the manufacturer, distributor, or rebranding a machine made by someone else?

Luscher designs and manufacturers both the printer, and most of the components, in Switzerland.

3. What other printers are the same or similar chassis?

There is no previous UV-curable inkjet with the same chassis because Luscher did not previously manufacturer solvent-based inkjet machines either. Otherwise, the Luscher sort of looks like an en-larged NUR Tempo, without the roll-fed capability that is beneath the Tempo.

4. How does this model compare with comparable previous printers?

This is the first inkjet printer of Luscher. The closest other printer is the NUR Tempo.

5. When was this model first introduced?

DRUPA 2004 in Germany was the first time I saw this printer at a trade show. So the underlying tech-nology had well over a year in beta testing before it arrived in Greece. Most manufacturers, especially of half-million dollar printers, show their new products about 6 to 9 months before the machines are fully finished.

6. Is this printer mature or still in alpha-stage or beta-stage?

This is a crucial question. Any printer made by a company that previously was primarily in the screen-printer manufacturing business, or any non-traditional inkjet business, will be experimenting with their first inkjet model. Even Oce, with more than a decade of experience with regular inkjet printers, had troubles with their economy UV model, the Arizona 60UV (it was withdrawn from the market after a long period of introduction at many trade shows).

Reports 3The Luscher is technically out of beta-stage, but it is still under development, and the aspects that still have kinks are still being worked on. The owner of the JetPrint machine in Athens said he was fully aware of the “developmental status” of the printer when he bought it.

When buyers are not aware that they are simultaneously beta-testers is where serious problems arose. One or two people in Italy that bravely were the first to buy the Zund 250 got several unexpected surprises: the experimental cationic UV ink chemistry did not work in that Zund 250 printer, especially not with the chosen printheads. The mate-rial feeding system had glitches as well. The printer was withdrawn.

So even the Swiss are not immune to the laws of reality.

However the ink in the Luscher works acceptably (it is the more traditional free radical chemistry), and there is no feeding system to go wrong since the JetPrint is a dedicated flatbed. So this machine will neither be withdrawn nor even really “recalled.”

7. List price? What other costs are involved?

A machine bought at a trade show may be purchased under list price. A model that is not 100% fin-ished may be at a sort-of beta-tester discount. It would be inappropriate of us to pry and ask what the print shop paid, but list price is 600,000 Euros.

8. What accessories are extra charge? Are these same or similar accessories included with other printers at no extra cost?

The buyer felt that “everything comes included.” The more expensive a printer is, the more likely they won’t try to trick the buyer with surprise charges. The cheapest printers have “prices” that are close to bait-and-switch. That was my initial negative reaction to advertised prices for the Raster Printers, until they revealed precisely the totals of different items, in addition to the printer cost, that would appear on the first invoice.

Structure of Printer

9. Is this a dedicated flatbed with no roll-to-roll capability? Or is this a true flatbed or just add-on feeder platforms at front and back? Was this printer made originally as a UV-curable ink printer, or is it retrofitted with UV-curing? If retrofitted, what was the original brand or model?

This is a dedicated flatbed only, with no roll-to-roll intentions whatsoever. It is not realistic to be perfect for rigid material and on the same machine perfect for roll-fed (As NUR found out).

Gandinnivations did the logical solution: one fully roll-to-roll and one dedicated flatbed. Luscher has no roll-to-roll printer.

10. If there is a vacuum table, how many separate sections can you assign vacuum to?

Sometimes I hear 9, other times I hear 12, independent areas of the vacuum. Each area is 1 x .7 meters (1 meter by 70 cm).

Reports 411. How much weight can the table hold?

Since the Luscher is the largest flatbed in the world (which naturally raises the question of whether it is too large), to get small pieces on and off the middle of the table may require getting up on the table and walking on it. The table can take 250 kilos, so can handle even most burly printer operators.

12. How is rigid media fed?

So far we have not seen any auto-feeder for the Luscher. At some trade shows they sometimes have one person loading, and at other times have two attendants. The Inca Columbia Turbo, which is a lot smaller table than the Luscher, more frequently has two attendants to load and unload.

The benefit of the size of the Inca is that one person on each side can align the same board (one holding one side; the other person aligning the other side). With the Luscher table, it is so big that only one person at a time can hold an edge. The other edge is far out in the middle of the table, except in the unlikely event that you are printing on one single rigid board that is the entire size of the table. Shipping, storing, and handling such single sheets of that size would be unrealistic.

13. What kinds of pin registration are present?

About 10 to 15 pins are present, in an L-pattern. Or you can have a custom-made pin system.

14. What features are being added, or changed in the next month or so?

The curing system is in evident need of upgrading, as is the data transfer (rate). So this Athens print shop are awaiting these upgrades. And in Mary 2006, at FESPA Digital, Luscher announced a new LED pinning system. So clearly there were curing issued with the original model. Now we will have to check and see if the new system works better than the original system.

15. Are upgrades modular, or are you stuck buying a completely separate new printer?

In part because the printer is still being improved, and in part because it is a +half-million-dollar ma-chine, it would not be fair to expect any owner of a current JetPrint to buy a completely new printer just to get new features. So the current chassis is being improved. L&P did the same for several years. When I inspected an L&P in Las Vegas in 2004 it had been updated so frequently, with no many new features, that I had no idea what model designation to assign to it. All of this is an advan-tage for the end-user (but tough for the reviewer).

Reports 5Construction (Build Quality)

16. What is the solid-ness of the construction of the outer body? Is it plastic? Metal? Heavy gauge?

Products built in Switzerland tend to be solidly constructed. However merely being Swiss and well de-signed does not guarantee that the sturdy parts actually function, as early adapters of the premature Zund 250 found out, to their displeasure.

Tech Support & Warranty

17. What sort of serious technical assistance is actually offered? Do the tech support operators read from a script and only get a real technician later on? (Most manufacturers are cutting back on tech support and/or have people answering the phones who don’t themselves actually use or know the equipment first-hand. They just attempt to read from a script.)

“Very good tech support; unbelievable, using remote access and using a camera.”

Printhead Technology

18. Is printing bi-directional or uni-directional? What are the different results in speed; in quality? What about bi-directional and uni-directional printing? Does the ink angle in one direction, or the other, or in two directions? In other words, is there any pattern in the ink dot shape on the substrate depending on which direction it is jetted from?

The machine can be set to print bi-directionally and uni-directionally. When you print plexi for backlit, it is best to do this at uni-directional mode; it cures best in this mode.

Soft materials should be printed at 4-pass bi-directional mode.

Reports 6Ink

19. How many colors are used to produce output - four, six, or eight?

7 colors+white: CMYK, light cyan, light magenta, light black, and white. So a total of 8 ink lines.

You can run the printer faster if you use dual CMYK, with no white, no light colors.

Comments

Several inkjet manufacturers have politely declined to answer questions or to provide their literature. But sooner or later we learn about printers from so many sources that we find out the full story about almost every printer. During the long drawn out period when the Kodak 5260 was being launched from 2001-2002, Kodak managers discretely asked for our reports, as did Encad managers, be-cause there were no other factual discussions of the issues of that printer. Kodak and Encad used the FLAAR reports to point out within their own company what the issues were. They obviously knew them already, but no one could risk their job by mentioning them. By using the FLAAR Reports they could blame us.

They finally withdrew the printer, sent every single machine to a compacter, and eventually got out of the inkjet printer business all together (the Encad factory closed its doors between February and March 2006; the giant Kodak booth at PMA did not display a single Encad printer).

Luscher has answered basic questions but has politely declined specifically to provide any Site Prep-aration Guide or any User’s Guide. Gandinnovations, MacDermid ColorSpan, Neolt, Dilli’s US distrib-utor all provided their complete suite of literature. ColorSpan and Gandinnovations have also opened their demo centers to FLAAR, indeed we have received training (on earlier printers in earlier years) at the ColorSpan headquarters. We also have a complete suite of Oce’s Owner’s Manuals, Operator Manual, and a wide range of Oce owner’s literature, both for their solvent printers as well as for their T220UV. We are missing only the manual for the ill-fated Arizona 60UV.

Sooner or later we obtain the manuals anyway, so it is a needless aggravation for a manufacturer to try to restrict it. Indeed we have 25 segments of the Luscher guides already, but since it is in 25 differ-ent one to four-page PDF’s it is rather difficult to open and read them individually. But sooner or later we will have the entire manual. When one is not supplied, we are naturally very curious as to what it is inside the manuals that the manufacturer does not want us to see.

Plus, every one who buys the printer will see the manual anyway, and if there are shocks inside, it would be better for them to learn about the downsides of the printer in advance. Just because a print-er has a few glitches does not mean you don’t want it. Your spouse and kids are probably not perfect either, but we hope you don’t want to sell them and buy another replacement. I know every downside of a GMC Suburban/Tahoe vehicle, but I will buy the same brand again and again, because I need their extra cargo space to carry camera equipment.

So a printer with weak features is not necessarily a “bad” printer, and by no means is it a printer that you should not buy. The purpose of FLAAR evaluations is so that everyone has access to fair infor-mation BEFORE they make their purchase decision. We make this effort because sometime in the next year we intend to acquire a UV printer, and we sure don’t want it to be the wrong make or model.

Reports 7So we check out each one of the now over 50 models as part of our due diligence. Since we do all this research anyway, we feel we might as well make our results known to other people too. Besides, it costs our institute lots of money to travel all over the world, not to mention the time involved, so we appreciate it when print shop owners purchase our reports.

Relative to this Site Visit

The decision maker felt the Luscher machine was a “very serious construction. We liked the Sias Print, but decided not to buy the Scitex Vision VeeJet.” The Scitex Vision VeeJet is the rebirth of the older Sias Digital, probably one of the earliest UV inkjet printers, dating back to the 1990’s.“It was a risk to buy the Luscher, but they provide good quality. We wanted a pure flatbed. Plus I pre-fer a bridge to move and not the flatbed itself.”

The company has been successful at printing floor tiles, but this required considerable trial and error for how to first roughen the surface to better receive the ink, and then to test what was the best lac-quer or varnish for a top coat.

Calculating ROI

A printer is only producing sellable goods when it is printing. While you are loading and unloading the machine, nothing is being printed. So if you have two people loading and unloading, you can get this accomplished in perhaps have the time. But you are paying the salaries of two people, which in Eu-rope is a substantial sum. In the southern half of the US a printer attendant would early considerably less.

During the time the machine is printing, you need to have something intelligent for the two attendants to be doing, so they are not just twiddling their toes.

Positive Features

You can select high quality: 7 colors + white; or slightly faster output: dual CMYK.

Pause for Rethinking

At the theoretical fastest speeds (especially dual CMYK), the ink won’t dry at that production speed. Oops. Back to the drawing board.

The site interview was done in late March 2006. This report was first issued in May 2006.

Reports 8

Nicholas Hellmuth with Dimitris Kaligeris and his daughter. Dimitris is the R&D Manager at pt tsiteros