They say screen-printing is a dinosaur technology. Don’t believe them. One of those debunking the myth is Mark Brooks, president of the Screen Printing & Graphic Imaging Association of Australia’s (SGIAA) Victorian arm.
He says the number of screen-printing enterprises in Australia has remained stable for the past 10 years, give or take some consolidation – the standout being Active Display Group’s acquisition of Adval last year.
Sure, UV inkjet has taken off at warp speed. Reflecting its growth, Fespa, the international screen-printing show, now has a dedicated digital version, Fespa Digital, with this year’s Barcelona event drawing crowds of printers from around the globe. (As an aside, at Fespa Digital 2012, Australia’s own living legend of large-format, Keith Ferrel, was admitted to the Fespa Hall of Fame, one of only five printers picked from 400 global entries).
The fact remains that in retail point-of-sale (POS) and outdoor signage, screen-printing is a persuasive volume solution. There is also a strong quality argument – screen inks are more intense with greater lay down and ability to match Pantones and metallics. New-generation UV inkjets might have perfected the high resolutions, but then resolution was never a must-have in display work. Nobody presses their face up against a standee.
The SGIAA’s Brooks is managing director of Ancyn, a display graphics company located in Kensington, Melbourne, where an Italian-made 1.8×1.2m Sias two-colour and three
Sias single-colour screen machines and a Swedish-made Svecia sit alongside two Inca flatbeds (a 1.6×2.4m Eagle and a 1.6×3.1m Columbia), a Mutoh for screen positives and an Epson proofer.
Short and sweet
UV flatbeds have created a buzz, admits Brooks, and digital is an ideal solution for short runs and two-day turnarounds, for that small order of display accessories ahead of a one-day shop sale. And that is how most screen printers are using it.
That’s not to say digital can’t be used for runs of scale. At Magnify Media in Melbourne – last month’s ProPrint Star Business – there is no screen kit. There never has been. The strategy of this inkjet-only enterprise, says managing director John Duplock, is to run his HP FB7500s as if they were screen presses, in volumes of hundreds – sometimes AO, 400gsm, double-sided. The formula is to make capacity loads pay off the capex on the HPs, then generate real profits.
At Active Display Group-Adval, managing director David Gittus finds the company’s optimal mix of screen and digital serves its clientele of retail and events companies. Based in Melbourne’s south-east, Active Display, which acquired Adval 17 months ago, has been expanding for years, with a buyout of creative agency Tap Productions and a half-stake in AFI Branding Solutions, a long-time supplier.
Its screen-printing arsenal is impressive. The company claims to be the biggest printer of its type in the country, so the machine list is appropriately long. The fleet includes two Lüscher JetScreen DX direct-to-screen systems, one of which came with the Adval acquisition. These enable the firm to produce four colour sets of screens in under an hour without film (it used to take a day with film).
Active Display’s new Sias Multigraphica 1,850×1,250mm moving table line lets it screen-print heavy and thick substrates such as X-board, Alcabond and MDF. It also has an Agfa M-Press Tiger, a hybrid flatbed screen/digital line that modifies a two-colour Thieme screen press, with the first colour screen head replaced by digital. Basically, there is a digital head, then a dryer, a screen head, then a dryer, then a stacker, with a fully automatic feeder at the front.
Gittus says: “We can achieve similar results with M-Press or screen, so it really depends on turnaround times and run length. On 150-plus runs, it’s a faster and more economical turnaround for us to run screen. There are certain jobs that go on the Tiger only if the client wants 720dpi resolution or similar. But at one metre – which is the point-of-purchase viewing distance– you can’t differentiate between a B&W 65 screen and a 720dpi digital print. Our cut-over point at which screen becomes more economical than digital is around 150, which is lower than most other companies. It’s faster and less expensive and at a higher resolution for us to run screen because we don’t use film.
“We didn’t jump into digital in a big way until the M-Press came out because nothing else stood up. The M-Press was the first one that sneaked into the ‘sweet spot’ in that bottom end of the screen runs. Once you’re up and running, screen just eats digital. The problem in the industry has been getting to that point and the cleanup with screen. But because we also have an inline automated screen wash system, that’s not a drama for us either.”
At Mills Display, the division of labour between UV and conventional screen on one hand and digital on the other hand breaks screen’s way when durability and colour intensity and accuracy are at stake, according to Melissa Gittus, general manager, display. (The surname is not a coincidence – Melissa is David Gittus’ partner and moved from Adval to Mills).
The Victorian-based signage major was bought out by screen printer Styrox in 2008. It is located at Hallam with a facility at Warriewood, Sydney. The firm specialises in robust, long-cycle exterior signage and retail POS accessories, such as deli rises in chillers for client Coles.
Screen is still the slam-dunk at Mills Display for colour fastness, solidity and opacity on dark/black substrates such as deli trays, heavy, textured and porous substrates and ink adhesion, says Melissa Gittus. Two Svecia presses – a conventional and a UV machine – generate much of the throughput. The UV line is used for detailed work on finer-mesh screens and higher-speed jobs that do not need outdoor robustness, while the conventional line handles steel, glass and other industrial applications.
There are two Roland DG roll-to-roll eco-solvent devices for in-store signage and a Durst Rho 800 three-metre continuous printer for premium-quality work.
“Customisation is a real advantage,” she says “No longer is it a choice between expensive small runs or overprints versus savings on mass-production. Now you can really have your cake and eat it too. The power to customise by audience demographic, geographical locations, and so on, was not a viable reality for screen printing, so digital has really changed the game here.”
Best of both
At Peak Digital, a five-year-old wide-format outfit at Seaford on Melbourne’s bayside, managing director Andrew Robertson says screen is still a major force, regardless of the company name.
The company’s staple is jumbo-sized outdoor displays and its screen kit comprises two semi-automatic presses – a 1,600 x 1,200mm Adco Scimitar clamshell press and a 1,000x760mm Svecia sliding-table machine, also sourced from Adco.
On the digital side, there is some HP equipment – an FB700 UV that generates 30-40m2 per hour and an L65500 latex printer. A recently purchased DYSS GF20616 generates up to 80m2 per hour. Resolution and turnaround times are wide-format digital’s aces, says screen veteran Robertson.
But when it comes to adherence on industrial substrates such as acrylics, rigid plastics, metal sheeting and corflute, generally outdoor signage printed to last for years, screen still rules the roost, he asserts. Why? Because the inks produce vibrant, accurate colours, with Pantone matching on corporate colours and ink matching to finished products.
Briter Australasia in Melbourne’s Rowville specialises in screen printing and diecutting of membrane switches, decals, facias, self-adhesive labels and electro-luminescents for LCD backlit displays. It runs a mix of technologies, but with the accent on screen. Atma and Adco semi-automatic presses printing a range of formats, from 500x700mm to 1,200x700mm. It also has a 2.4m Océ Arizona 360GT flatbed printer, which prints CMYK plus white.
“Sometimes a customer wants an engineering decal in certain colours but doesn’t want screen print because it can be horrendously expensive, so we give them the digital option,” says Briter manager Justin Wong. “But we tell them that with some colours, we just can’t match screen because the digital press can’t print spot colours or rich colours. But once they’re aware of that – and once they’ve seen the price – they’re happy with it.”
Task at hand
Yet digital is not always chosen for savings. It performs some tasks better, such as printing on colourbond, because digital print can be printed directly onto the material. A key application for Briter is car showrooms for client General Motors-Holden. On the other hand, printing LSC lighting product is a screen task.
Occasionally jobs are printed on both types of presses, but white is still a problem for digital in terms of cost. “Sometimes we print on the Océ but use screen printing to print clear and sometimes we print on the Océ because it’s still more economical, instead of printing digital white, we screen-print white to keep costs down.”
White ink has been touted as a killer app by plenty of vendors. Manufacturers exhibiting new white ink options at Drupa included HP with its Scitex range, as well as Roland DG, which has added a white ink option to the VersaStudio BN-20 and VersaCamm VS series of eco-solvent, metallic inkjet printer/cutters.
The jury is out on whether this truly is the unique selling point that the vendors want printers to believe. There’s also the concern about white ink blocking the nozzles. One signage veteran tells ProPrint that the market applications for white ink are still too narrow to justify the downtime issues that have plagued some white ink technology.
Drupa will, of course, bring other technological breakthroughs to challenge the status quo. One of the most bullish claims comes from EFI, a company already well-versed in large-format digital through its Vutek range of printers. Now the US-based manufacturer says designed a true “screen killer”, which it dubs Orion. This is not the first time people have heard this from EFI. There are echoes of Drupa 2008 in the announcement. At that show, EFI launched the “screen process killing” Vutek DS8300, but it never came to market. EFI chief executive Guy Gecht says the project was canned because of the financial crisis.
But he says EFI has got it right second time around. “We’re going to say goodbye to screen printing in wide-format – this product will expedite the transformation of grand format from analogue to digital.”
Orion combines LED and UV digital printing technology, and delivers speed and quality that Gecht describes as “fantastic”. It can print onto substrates of widely varying thicknesses from very thin to very thick. According to EFI, Orion represents a new category of digital printing. The press is described as an industrial printing solution for everything from short-run customised products to high-volume applications.
It features a new imaging technology that delivers a wider colour gamut, combined with higher quality, fewer artefacts and better gloss control. At time of writing, the vendor was keeping back a few surprises for Drupa, and so format and pricing details were yet to be revealed.
Trade print sending out digital
Just because some clients want milk, doesn’t mean you have to a buy a cow. You can write some healthy business for digitally printed displays without buying the kit. That’s the philosophy shared by the three directors of Melbourne’s STS Creative, Trevor Stanley, Greg Seabrook and John Fetherston.
Stanley is a former National Print Awards judge and STS is a mainstay on the Diamond winner lists at the Victorian PICAs. Stanley is a champion of screen’s strengths in retail displays. The inks are denser and more vibrant, and at up to 185-line per inch, the screens provide an opacity unmatched by UV inkjet, he says. The fact that screen printed jobs generally do not require a clear varnish makes them more economical.
“Screen still has the ability to print one, two, three, any PMS colour, and not having to print four-colour process or six colours to try and achieve a colour that is close to a PMS colour. Also our print size with multi-colour screen printing machines is anything from 1,248m2 to 1,872m2, depending on stocks we print on. Flatbed digital is approximately 292m2 on a good resolution to a low quality of around 540m2, and this will depend on stocks being perfectly flat.”
STS has a Sakurai 800×1,100mm cylinder press that can pump out 2,500 impressions per hour (try that on a digital flatbed), three Sias single-colour flat-tables, and two Thiemes: a single-colour 760×1,020mm and a multi-colour 1,600×2,600mm.
That’s not to say that 16-year-old STS doesn’t offer customers UV digital work, but this constitutes just 5% of its business. Stanley does not rule out ever investing in digital but says equipment prices will need to come down.
For now, short quantities, such as mock-ups for clients – or any runs under around 100– are outsourced to various businesses, including Peak Digital, Resolution Imaging and Design To Print. These companies in turn send their screen orders to STS.
“It’s networking and it’s how the industry should run,” says Stanley.
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