Canon’s offering in the large format printer space has expanded to fit just about every customer need.
Canon New Zealand is committed to capturing a larger slice of the large format market, and its range of state-of-the art large format printers offering unsurpassed power, speed, flexibility and quality, are helping it do just this.“Canon’s reputation as a true digital imaging solution provider from capture through to output is evident in the advancements we have made in the large format space,” said Marty Havill, product manager – Large Format, Canon New Zealand. “With a full-line of solutions from 17-inch up to 60-inch wide output, Canon has a large format solution for just about every need.”
Aimed primarily at the print-for-pay sector, including copy shops and professional print businesses, Canon’s imagePROGRAF iPF9000 is the company’s flagship large format printer, and continues to add value to an increasing number of print shops. For busy print company, Oliver Young, improved colour management has been one of the biggest advantages of the iPF9000.
“The printer has been calibrated to match our press,” says business development manager, Aaron McDonald.
“We print all the magazine cover posters for publisher ACP and the iPF9000 gives colour so reliable we can colour match pretty much first time every time.”
Marty Havill adds: “Impact, productivity, efficiency, versatility and cost-efficiency are words we often hear bandied about, but this printer delivers in every single one of these aspects.
“The iPF9000 delivers colour so reliable that less material is wasted on colour matching. Couple this with its remarkable print speeds and print operators find time is easily gained to focus on other areas of business.”
Canon’s unique twelve-ink printing system delivers prints up to 60-inches wide that are hard-pressed to tell from the original.
“The addition of red, green, blue, grey and photo-grey to the standard ink set produces a wider colour gamut for precise reproduction while using significantly less ink,” Havill says.
Canon’s patented FINE technology produces a droplet size of just four picolitres, so delicate colour graduations are reproduced beautifully and the Lucia pigment inks also offer excellent colour stability and durability.
Like its larger sibling, the newly released iPF8100 (which prints up to 44-inches wide) is engineered for advanced image quality, and both models are engineered for speed – printing up to four times faster than comparable printers.
This is thanks to dual print heads that lay down ink quickly and accurately with 30,720 individual nozzles (2,560 for each colour) – the most nozzles-per-colour in the industry to date. For convenience, both matte and gloss blacks are loaded and the printer will switch between the two automatically, eliminating the waste of swapping inks for different media.
Cost is reduced through the increased print head performance, improved drivers, enhanced software and durable, fade-resistant pigment inks while enhanced versatility means print shops can expand their service offering, enabling them to do more for existing customers and gain new customers.
Havill says the iPF8100 and iPF9000 truly realise designers’ creative work to the full through the wide choice of media and sizes available, combined with the impressive colour gamut.
“These machines make an impact. When customers see their work in full, glorious colour in sizes up to 1.5m wide, they are always very impressed.”
Oliver-Young’s Aaron McDonald agrees with this. “Feedback from our customers has been excellent,” he says. “Most customers like large format printers, but feel that some printers don't bring out the full potential of their work. With this Canon machine they have been very impressed with the colour gamut and quality from the new pigment inks.”
McDonald says the machine is a great workhorse; offering reliability and ease-of-use to help meet the company’s high-volume print needs.
Productivity enhancing features include a high-capacity ink tank system that lets users choose between 700 ml or 330 ml tanks, a subtank ink system which allows users to change ink cartridges on the fly, a 40GB hard-disk drive to spool and hold the print data, a standard automatic take-up reel system, as well as a large
LCD operation panel to display illustrated basic operations.
Havill says Canon is committed to capturing even more of the large format market. “We have an increasingly robust line-up of large format products to suit a wide variety of user needs, and with a couple of exciting new models in the pipelines we look forward to expanding our presence within this space.”
