Guy Spandler
Digital Print Manager
Screenprint Productions
England
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Brief
I was briefed by my boss to find a new digital printer to purchase that would be an addition to our existing equipment. As we are a screen-print house most of our work involves spot colours; we never just print four-colour images (photographic) on their own.
As our customers expect high standards of print we can not supply them with spot work with visible lines in the print. We needed a digital printer that produced large areas of spot colours flawlessly but at a speed that was similar to our screen-printing lines. I was given a budget of around £300k.
I looked at all the machines on the market, even the ones outside my price range to see what advances were being made in digital print technologies. I visited FESPA 2009 in Amsterdam and viewed all the machines there. After FESPA I had narrowed down to the three machines that I thought would be suitable for the company: the Meital 302, the Vutek QS2000 and the Inca Spyder 320Q.
The next three months were spent going to demonstrations and getting sample prints produced on these machines. All the printers are very capable and all have a specific place in today's digital print market, but as we were looking for something to get to the next level of quality and production we ultimately decided the Meital 302 was the machine for us.
The Meital 302 vs the Inca Spyder 320Q
As quality and accurate spot colour reproduction are main priorities of ours we had the same files printed on both machines to compare along with speeds the print took. The Meital prints were the most colour accurate and had no visible lines.
We had a issue with the Inca Spyder 320Q "reds" not being red enough. The Inca Spyder 320Q printing at similar speed to the Meital 302 was producing liney prints. To get rid of these lines the Inca Spyder 320Q had to be slowed down and the ink usage put up to 200%, whereas the Meital 302 was just running normal ink usage at normal production speeds. This, to us, meant the Meital 302 would be a more economical machine to run day to day.
The Inca Spyder 320Q had visible lines in black only gradients, whereas the Meital 302 did not. I came to the conclusion that The Meital 302 would print faster and at a higher quality than the Inca Spyder 320Q in our print setting.
The Meital 302 vs the Vutek QS2000
Altough the spot colours were as close as the Meital 302 was producing, the difference in time these prints were taking was staggering. The Meital 302 with its dedicated two-bed substrate delivery system made the Vutek QS2000 unable to compete in time, although the prints were of a similar standard.
At this point all comparisons between the Meital 302 and the Vutek QS2000 stopped as, from a production point of view, the Meital 302 was so much faster.
Conclusion
As I stated before, I was looking for a digital press that was moving us up to the next level of quality and production. I believe that is the Meital 302 - which is the only large-format digital press on the market that has the two bed substrate delivery system, and the only machine that uses the Xaar 1001 hybrid side-shooter print head which is capable of very fine detail and very solid coverage at a very fast speed.
I could not find any similar advances on any other machines, even the £1,000,000 digital presses in the market place were relying on old technology which I was acutely aware could be superseded in a year or two with new models.
I also think the Meital 302 to a certain degree is more "future-proof" than the other machines I looked at, which was an important factor for me. Understanding my customers' needs has made the decision to purchase the Meital 302 over the other digital machines an easy one.
Yours faithfully,
Guy Spandler
Meital 300 Series Brochure