Printing United

[Kalispel]

I spent the day wandering through Printing United. We are going to buy a UV flat bed printer for a niche application. I went to the show because my experience is in metals processing and I know next to nothing about printing. I got useful information and saw a few other interesting things but my overall impression is the industry has consolidated to the point that there is no innovation. Everybody has a Chinese-made mechanical frame with an array of Ricoh or Kyocera print heads strapped to a flatbed, roll feeder or garment frame. It seems the only differentiators are customer support and maybe reliability of the overall assembly.

There were some impressive displays like a monster machine printing 4x8 panels in 18 seconds but it was still just a big cluster of Kyocera print heads moving fast on a generic gantry.

Some of the images are spectacular but I’m not sure the quality differences can really be appreciated by normal people. I had a folks try to show me why their print was better but I really could not see it. The line between stunning vivid color and unbelievable incredible color is kind of blurry to me. Any of the printers would meet our needs for image quality.

Textured printing is interesting and somewhat innovative but it does not seem to get much attention.

The show is probably most useful for people looking for sources of tchotchke to print on or second-tier print supplies.

Are there new technical capabilities would you guys and gals like to see in the future?

 

[VizualVoice]

Interesting writeup. I'm hoping to make it over there for the day on friday with no particular agenda.

 

[Smoke_Jaguar]

Pretty much sums up the tech. =)

 

[Johnny Best]

You know, I was wondering the other day about how boring, your phrase was “no innovation”, this spot I go to looking for something new interesting. Maybe the world goes through phases and we are in our no innovation period. Last time we pasted this was the 10th century bc when Ester was in power.

 

[Pauly]

Plenty of innovation.
Its in places you wont see or look. and they're small bug big at the same time.

One of the biggest at the show is the Canon Colorado XL. A lot of innovative tech on that machine.
Jwei is the first Flatbed cuter with an auto tool changer (blades etc) not router bit changer. Not "new" but relatively new and very innovative.

Innovation happens in small increments.

Most innovative techs is in automation and quality control.

 

[Solventinkjet]

You pretty much got it right. The main decision point after price and budget in this industry is basically, is the dealer you buy it from responsive and knowledgeable? Do they have a dedicated tech on staff or do they have a roaming tech who's sometimes in town and sometimes not? Or even worse, contract out a national 3rd party company to do the tech work. Do they stock the ink or dropship it from the out of state manufacturer? Those are the types of questions you'll want to ask.