The 20-staff outfit, based in Nazeing, purchased the machine for £380,000, fully financed from an HSBC equipment finance loan in April, and had it up and running by May. It replaced an older HP Scitex machine, which Imaginators managing director Matt Tydeman said printed at a tenth of the speed of the Durst and at a lower quality.
“We sell our business on quality and service and essentially we’re only as good as our last job and the Durst has really enabled us to fulfil our criteria as a business,” said Tydeman.
“We had a very busy period over the summer months – our specialisation is in the sports area – but really with deadlines becoming much shorter these days we couldn’t have produced the volume of work we’ve done and the spike in throughput without this machine.”
Tydeman’s interest in Durst began around three years ago when he purchased a “game-changing” P10 roll-to-roll hybrid flatbed with white ink. Imaginators had previously been one of the early adopters of super-wide large-format, becoming one of the first printers in the country to take a Nur Blueboard in 1999, when it still mainly did litho pre-press work.
“We’re lucky enough to own two of the Dursts now,” added Tydeman.
“The devices are all about throughput and quality. The production throughput has been significant and the quality of the output has been incredible. It really has changed the way we look at production now, incredibly so, inasmuch as what would have taken us a week is being turned around in a day.”
The Rho 512R UV inkjet uses Durst’s Quadro Array 12M printhead and Variodrop technology. It prints at a maximum speed of 350sqm/hr at maximum 800dpi resolution and can handle three 1.6m rolls simultaneously. Imaginators chose to configure the six-colour (CMYK plus light cyan and light magenta) machine without white.
An upgraded version, the Rho 512R Plus, was launched at Fespa earlier this year.
Alongside the Dursts, the £2m-turnover outfit, founded in 1976, runs four other Scitex machines, along with a range of finishing equipment that includes Esko Kongsberg cutting tables.
