FREMONT, California – EFI™, a world leader in customer-focused digital printing innovation, today announced that Primary Color, a Costa Mesa, Calif.-based visual solutions company, has installed the country’s first EFI VUTEk® GS5500LXr Pro LED inkjet printer with UltraDrop™ Technology.
 
The 5-meter wide, roll-to-roll printer’s high-quality capabilities give Primary Color a competitive advantage on the color-critical point-of-purchase (POP) and out-of-home signage it produces for leading brands in the entertainment, restaurant, automotive and retail industries. The VUTEk GS5500LXr Pro printer will make its North American debut this month at the SGIA Expo, Oct. 22-24 in Las Vegas.

 
“We decided to acquire this printer because of the expanded color gamut we gained using the printer’s LED curing platform and the new, 7-picoLiter UltraDrop printheads,” said Dan Hirt, Primary Color’s president. “The quality we are getting in our first few weeks running the printer is impressive and we have already received positive feedback from clients.”
 
3M™ MCS™ Warranty for durable, high-end vehicle graphics
 
Beyond its expanded color gamut, the new printer offers the “green,” energy-saving benefits of EFI’s LED imaging technology, as well as higher-quality imaging, with sharply defined text in printed work. Plus, the co-branded EFI and 3M SuperFlex ink Primary Color runs on its new printer will create new opportunities in fleet and vehicle graphics work.
 
The 3M Commercial Solutions Division offers a seven-year 3M™ MCS™ Warranty for vehicle graphics when produced using the appropriate 3M base film, EFI VUTEk GSLXr 3M™ SuperFlex UV Inks (excluding white), the new EFI VUTEk GS5500LXr Pro printer and the appropriate 3M film overlaminate. Widely recognized as the industry’s most comprehensive finished graphics warranty, the 3M™ MCS™ Warranty covers fading, cracking, peeling and other aspects of graphic performance.
 
The length of the warranty is an important benefit for Primary Color’s clients, according to Hirt.
 
“Offering a five-year or a seven-year warranty is a big advantage when compared to the two to three year warranties normally offered,” said Hirt. “It makes a big difference financially for our customers if they do not have to re-wrap all of their vehicles every few years and instead install a wrap that will pretty much last the entire useful life of the fleet vehicle.”
 
UltraDrop and LED: A great combination of quality and sustainability
 
At the heart of the new 5-meter LED inkjet printer is UltraDrop Technology, EFI’s latest-generation imaging platform. UltraDrop employs native 7-picoLiter printheads with true multi-drop addressability in each dot position, giving high apparent resolution and high-definition quality with four-level grayscale and two ink density levels. UltraDrop gives users a number of output advantages, including:

• Outstanding smoothness in shadows, gradients and transitions;
• Superb text quality with standard and knockout four-point text;
• Fewer stray “satellite” droplets and more clarity in all print modes.

The VUTEk GS5500LXr Pro model also features EFI’s industry-leading LED inkjet technology, which creates significant energy savings for printing companies while virtually eliminating VOCs from the printing process. With LED, the printer’s inks cure at a lower temperature than is required for other curing or drying methods. Not only can that result in significantly lower energy usage costs, it gives users the ability to print on a wider range of media that cannot withstand high heat – including less-expensive and thinner media.
 
Primary Color’s new printer extends the broad range of high-end, superwide-format EFI VUTEk print technologies Primary Color uses. The company operates nine EFI VUTEk devices in all, including a pair of 3.2-meter, hybrid roll/flatbed VUTEk HS100 Pro UV inkjet presses and a 3.2-meter VUTEk TX3250r roll-to-roll dye-sublimation printer. All of Primary Color’s VUTEk printers use EFI Fiery® proServers for efficient and reliable color management and file processing.
 
“EFI has received a tremendous amount of interest in our newest, most-advanced roll-to-roll inkjet printer, and we believe the advanced capabilities we are bringing to market with the EFI VUTEk GS5500LXr Pro model will take our ‘cool cure’ LED inkjet imaging into new applications where customers like Primary Color can establish profitable, higher-value services,” said Scott Schinlever, senior vice president and general manager, EFI Inkjet Solutions.