Both supplied by CMYUK, the Preston-based business said the investment was made to replace various existing malfunctioning and underperforming machines.
The Mimaki machine, which was installed first in late May, is a roll-to-roll UV curable printer that handles print widths up to 1.6m.
Display Wizard managing director Peter Symonds said: “It just did what we needed to do. The quality is very good, and we are operating it on the second highest quality setting.”
He said it also runs slightly faster than its previous machine while “Mimaki printed output sits perfectly flat on a banner stand and looks great, also there are no heads to replace”.
The EFI machine was installed a week after the Mimaki, in early June, to handle the company’s pop-up and panelling work.
A 3.2m-wide four-colour printer with a white ink option, the Vutek Pro 32r+ features 7pL UltraDrop Technology for high-definition print quality.
It uses cool cure LED technology that reduces operating costs and allows for the use of thinner substrates, promoting a lower environmental footprint.
“I’ve always seen EFI printers as the Rolls Royce of the digital printing industry, lots of companies use them, and the technology is proven,” said Symonds.
He added the machine allows for dual roll printing and that the EFI demonstration showing how the dual rolls worked was “impressive”.
“We’ve printed dual rolls since, flawlessly. We’ve also run triple rolls and that’s worked well too,” he said.
At the time of installing the Vutek Pro 32r+, Amira Bouchiba, CMYUK Academy manager, implemented an automated workflow that does away with the need to create manual files in the company’s existing but now defunct i-Cut software.
The Vutek Pro 32r+ has an in-built Fiery RIP that creates both a print file for the printer and a cut file that it sends to the company’s Kongsberg digital cutting table, which was also purchased from CMYUK in 2019.
Fiery software offers RIP and print on demand functionality, and the ability to print pre-ripped files at the printer interface.
“Fiery has improved our workflow. It has completely removed the i-Cut route and has saved us a great deal of time,” said Symonds.
Founded in 2004, Display Wizard primarily services the exhibitions industry. Despite the challenges in the sector over the last few years, the business successfully navigated its way through lockdown and, with the new equipment, can cope with the increase in market demand in-house.
