Every now and then a product comes along that really seems to hit a sweet spot in its target market.
Thinking back, Linotype's Linotronic imagesetters come to mind, along with Heidelberg's long-perfecting Speedmasters and KBA's Rapida 205 large-format litho press.
The latest bit of kit that is rapidly becoming a "must-have" for companies in the retail graphics business - here in the UK at least - is the Inca Onset. The newest customer, Imprint Group, has bought two.
In keeping with the zeitgeist it is of course an inkjet printing device, but its particular combination of throughput, size, quality, ease-of-use and an ability to handle a wide variety of substrates is ticking all the right boxes for POS printers.
The latest model can print at speeds of up to 700m2
per hour, and it will be intriguing to map how the break points between digital
print and conventional screen or large-format litho printing may change as a
result. Speaking to Inca the view is that the fastest Inca competes against
conventional on something like 500-600 "beds" of print. That bed
being 3.2m x 1.2m in size.
Something else to celebrate is that this machine is the result of British R&D and a bunch of clever techy types who listened to what customers wanted and came up with products to fit, so 'rah for that. Now Japanese owned, admittedly, but British nonetheless.
