PUBLICATION CENTER

Earlier this year, Epson announced a 64-in., 8-color solvent-ink printer designed to bring new levels of print quality, faster production speeds, and lower costs to the high-volume décor and art reproduction market. Epson says the printer should be shipping by the end of the third quarter with a list price of $28,005. The new GS6000 Stylus Pro will be available at LexJet.

At the same time, LexJet is actively developing high-end yet economical fine art and photo media for the next generation of solvent printers, such as the EPSON Stylus Pro GS6000. These new products are apparently catching on as LexJet Sunset Fine Art Gloss SUV by Hahnemuhle was recently voted the top product in the Fine Art category of Wide-Format Imaging’s annual Readers’ Choice Top Products of 2008 awards.

The Epson Stylus Pro GS6000 printer uses Epson’s new UltraChrome GS solvent ink to deliver both a wide color gamut and virtually odorless printing without the need for special ventilation or air purification systems.  The inks are designed to produce scratch-resistant prints on the wide range of materials currently available for the production of outdoor signage, vehicle wraps, trade-show exhibits, wallcoverings, decorative art, and retail and P.O.P. graphics. 

The eight-color inkset adds orange and green inks to the conventional  cyan, magenta, yellow, black, light magenta, and light cyan inks used in other printers. This helps produce a color gamut wide enough to hit many of the red and orange brand colors that have been notoriously difficult for some solvent printers to hit. Maximum cartridge size is 950 ml and the cartridges are hot-swappable.  Inks will cost approximately $0.25/ml compared to the estimated $0.27 to $0.39/ml costs of other mild solvent printers.

For maximum media versatility, the printer includes individually controlled heaters in which temperatures are controlled via front-control panel or front-end RIP software.  According to Epson, the fast-drying inks don’t require supplementary driers for speedy production. The printer can output photographic-quality trade-show and retail signage at 91 sq. ft./hr., everyday signage at speeds up to 180 sq. ft./hr., and banners at speeds of up to 340 sq. ft./hr. 

The Epson Stylus Pro GS6000 is designed to be safe enough to use in a standard office environment with a good air conditioning system. In addition to providing virtually odorless printing, Epson UltraChrome GS ink doesn’t contain Nickel (Ni) compounds, with can be harmful to employees and the environment.  The primary drawback to the elimination of nickel compounds is that certain outdoor graphics will only last up to two years outdoors instead of up to three years.

Other features of the Stylus Pro GS6000 include an efficient take-up reel for unattended production of larger print runs, an intelligent preventive maintenance system that reduces the amount of time operators must spend each day on maintenance, an automatic nozzle check and cleaning system, and myEpsonPrinter.com. Through this Web-based printer information system, you can track ink and media consumption for each job and manage printers in remote locations.