Orora Visual has invested in the Durst P5 350 press at its Dallas headquarters location in Mesquite, Texas. The purchase expands its large format digital printing capacity and product offerings for its retail and consumer goods customers’ in-store visual communication needs.
This investment brings the company’s total to 15 large format (3.2m wider) presses – the largest in the country.
The Durst P5 350 has double the output capacity per hour of the company’s current equivalent press. It prints up to eight colours – with two sets of CMYK that reduce the number of print head passes thus increasing speed.
It also prints a solid white underprint and a white overprint. It is a UV LED ink-cured press, which means less energy consumption and less heat that may otherwise distort certain substrates. The print resolution output is 1200 dpi (dots per inch).
Smaller droplet size
The Durst features a substantially smaller picolitre, or ink droplet size, a significant factor when evaluating print quality. At seven picolitres, it delivers improved reproduction of continuous tones, smoother color graduations, and crisp details such as skin tones, hair, thin strokes, small text, and tiny legal lines.
Jim Blee, vice president of Orora Visual, says the company can offer customers greater speed. He adds that the higher quality output competes with traditional offset printing methods. He says, “The fine details are especially important for our customers in the high-end beauty, fashion, and packaging industries. Being able to hit critical skin tones and hold very fine type while addressing very compressed lead times is a game changer.”
The hybrid Durst P5 prints on sheets (or boards) and rolled media up to 3.5m wide and a max board thickness of 7cm.
It offers many new digitally printed product offerings for Orora Visual that were not available in its current arsenal. Namely, the ability to print directly onto uneven, wavy materials due to possible print head strikes. New products include corrugated cardboard displays and packaging, thin polystyrenes, and wavy polyethylene substrates.
Wide substrate range
Other signage and graphics substrates include just about anything from rolled banner materials to rigid wood and metal for both indoor and outdoor applications.
Mike Runyon, director of operations at Orora Visual’s Dallas facility, says the ability to offer print direct on corrugated materials is exciting, and bypasses the need to print a label and then mount it to corrugate. He says, “The new Durst has guide rails, so to speak, that keep the wavy, uneven material flat throughout the printing process.
“One of its many automated features is media detection, which means there is no manual setup labour needed. We will be much more competitive on these projects.”
