The printer delivers four-colour print plus grayscale and white and offers single-pass and multilayer capabilities. Variable droplet sizes provide eight levels of grayscale. The manufacturer also said the 1.65m-wide machine offered fast changeovers between rigid and flexible materials.

“The benefits of LED are that we use light instead of heat to cure. Heat is a very abrasive process with UV so the fact that we’re removing this process and only using LED gives a lot of flexibility,” said vice-president of marketing Ken Hanulec.

“You can print on much thinner substrates, the shipping costs and energy costs are a lot lower and it’s more environmentally friendly. It’s been a huge success; we've just registered probably double the demand we originally forecast.”

EFI first showed the printer, which costs around €100,000 (£81,000), at last month’s International Sign Expo in Orlando.

“With the H1625 we’re able to bring the power of LED technology, which has been so successful in our Vutek line, to the wide-format sector. It’s a great opportunity for smaller companies that outsource their work to keep it in-house,” said senior vice-president of worldwide sales and marketing Frank Mallozzi.

According to EFI, energy assessments carried out by Fogra have shown that Vutek wide-format printers with LED curing showed energy reductions of up to 82% in comparison with devices with conventional mercury arc lamps.