“We were looking for capabilities we didn’t have, and the new VUTEk is much faster and prints at higher resolutions than our other digital equipment,” Hudson said. “As a manufacturer, it is important for us to offer a wide range of products to our distributor partners. The capabilities of this new printer help us do that, plus it creates new growth opportunities with higher-end specialty graphics and point-of-purchase displays.”
 
An upgrade from solvent and UV to “cool cure” LED
 
Safehouse supplemented its existing printer line-up with the new printer purchase, a two-meter wide hybrid device that can run both rolls and flat/rigid materials. The company is now benefitting from the higher consistency and throughput the printer provides. Plus, the printer’s “cool cure” LED technology offers lower operating costs, as it uses less energy for curing or drying compared with other digital devices at Safehouse. The LED technology also expands the range of compatible substrates Safehouse can print on, including thin or specialty substrates that cannot withstand the heat of other drying or curing methods.
 
“The versatility this printer gives us in terms of both materials and print quality is eye opening,” according to Hudson. “There is a lot we can do with this printer. We took sample signs produced on the printer to the National Safety Council Show and received overwhelmingly positive feedback from attendees who were interested in our expanded capabilities.”
 
New opportunities with higher-quality imaging
 
The printer features EFI’s 7-picoliter UltraDrop™ Technology, which provides true multi-drop addressability in each dot position, four-level grayscale imaging and two ink density levels for high apparent resolution and high-definition quality. The printer not only delivers outstanding smoothness in shadows, gradients and transitions, but prints also have superb text quality in type sizes down to four points – something that has already expanded the range of products Safehouse provides. “Now, we can digitally print products requiring higher resolution and smaller font types that we just could not do before with a UV-cure printer,” explained Hudson.
 
For more information about EFI VUTEk printers, visit www.efi.com or contact (800) 875-7117.