The UV inkjet printer was installed at the firm’s Crawley, West Sussex facility in June. The company also operates a second site in Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire.
The firm, which operates in the transactional mailing, security, label, commercial and business forms sectors, started to receive an increasing number of requests for wide-format jobs such as posters and displays.
“We can now bring in-house jobs that we’d have turned away before, so we’ve got a lot more control. It’s more convenient and there’s more profit in it for us as well,” said studio manager Andrew Ray.
DCL Print has been a Fujifilm customer since 2007 when it bought a Fujifilm platesetter. It looked at other machines but found that the Acuity 1600 LED best fit its requirements.
“We are extremely pleased with the products and service from Fujifilm, so it was an obvious supplier for us to consider when we started our search for a wide-format printer,” said managing director Simon Smode.
The Acuity LED 1600 uses six inks, including white and clear ink, and can apply these in a single pass to produce a high-gloss finish.
It prints 20sqm/hr and supports substrates of up to 1,610mm wide on wide-format roll media, and rigid sheet substrates up to 13mm thick. This includes PET, acrylic, polycarbonate substrates and lightweight boards.
“Because it’s UV it cures straight away, so you can handle materials immediately. Whereas with a lot of the other machines you have to wait 24 hours before you can really do anything with them,” said Ray.
In March, the firm, which has 75 staff across its two sites and a turnover of around £6m, invested in a Xerox iGen 150 at Ipex.
