Mainly designed for use in the soft signage industries, it is expected to become available for purchase in early 2017. Mimaki general marketing manager EMEA Mike Horsten said the price of the machine is not yet confirmed.

Unveiled at the SGIA Expo, Las Vegas this week, it will be exclusively distributed in the UK and Ireland by Hybrid Services.

The new printer is an advance on the Ts500P-3200, which was launched in February of this year, but with a number of new developments. 

Horsten said: “The Tx500 is based on the engine of the Ts500 that is commonly available in Europe right now, but it has a built-in calender and a different transport system when it comes to the pick-up side.

“Specification wise, it is pretty much one-to-one with the Ts500.”

The Tx500 comes with an inline heat fixation unit, which can generate temperatures of up to 200°C.

“It reduces your production time when in-line calendering. Once it’s rolled up, you’re finished and you don’t have to bring material to the calender station. So it is timesaving when printing and finishing, but the restriction is that the choice of materials is a little bit less,” added Horsten.

The Tx500 prints at speeds of up to 130sqm/hr in four-colour mode and 105sqm/hr in six-colour mode at a resolution of 720x1,080dpi. It uses 12 printheads in a staggered three-line array.

Horsten said the machine would particularly appeal to the US market.

“Europe has a much more mature soft signage market, many people have big calenders already in place, so we think it is more sellable in the US than Europe. Customers in the US are less likely to have anything like this in place,” he added.

Mimaki is fresh off the back of two recent product launches, the JFX200-2531, launched two weeks ago, and two new flatbeds, the UJF-3042 MkII and the UJF-6042 MkII, launched a week before that.

Horsten said the flatbeds have had a “really good reception”.