UV Printer History and Future Prediction 3 ARTJET UV Printer

I. Entering overseas markets(2005~2009) _ UV Printer History and Future Prediction

I don’t think I saw any Chinese UV printers at the SGIA exhibition in the US in 2004.

But the very next year, in 2005, China also showed UV printers at international exhibitions.

I think Flora, Techwin, and three other companies.

In the following 3-4 years, Chinese manufacturers participated in almost all exhibitions, and with their low prices, many dealers appeared in each country, especially in Europe.

In the early days of overseas expansion, there was a sense that Chinese UV printers were dominating the global market.

II. 3 years later(2010 ~2015) _UV Printer History and Future Prediction

1.Overseas market_UV Printer History and Future Prediction

Unlike the atmosphere in early 2005, two to three years later, in 2007 and 2008, Chinese UV printers began to receive harsh criticism.

Let me tell you an episode.

He is a friend who became our UV Printer dealer. In 2005, he was the Flora UV Printer Netherlands dealer.

He started out at a low price and soon sold 6 Flora UV Printers.

He installed the first machine without any problems, and when he saw the soldering tools in the tool box,

he laughed with the customer, saying, “Why did you send me the soldering iron? Is there anything I need to solder? I guess he’s just joking.”

And a month later, when there was a data problem during printing, he contacted China,

“You can fix the board with the soldering iron in the tool box.”

He said it while laughing while drinking, but at the time, there was no way to deal with it, so he thought about immigrating to Australia.

2. Chinese market_UV Printer History and Future Prediction

Since we have a Chinese dealer for our UV Printer, we naturally visit or participate in Chinese exhibitions several times a year.

While visiting every year, I saw with my own eyes that Chinese UV Printer manufacturers were steadily increasing, but the printing quality was not good.

The banding was severe, and the white ink was also flying around.

But that was only for a short while,

At the Guangzhou exhibition in 2013, I saw a Chinese manufacturer’s UV Printer that used G-mask (feathering mask in China) to print a solid color without banding.

G-mask is a groundbreaking software technique that reduces printing banding, and it was only implemented by Swiss Q in the high end and OCE in the mid end that took the lead in the market.

JETRIX UV Printer of InkTec, a Korean manufacturer, also implemented it after 3~4 years of research, and it was also developed by a Chinese UV Printer.

III. Time for technology development_UV Printer History and Future Prediction

1. Meaning of G mask _ UV Printer History and Future Prediction

When printing solid color (normal images are almost invisible), the print is not as smooth as silk printing, and lines are visible at the end of the print head.

These lines are called “banding.”

In solvent printers, the ink spreads after it runs out and sticks to the material due to heat, blurring the details, but this banding is not visible.

However, UV printers harden the ink by UV light as soon as it runs out, so the areas where it passes are particularly marked.

UV printer dealers and users all evaluate the print quality based on how severe or mild this banding is.

To alleviate this banding, the nozzle spraying method is made complicated like rain, which is called “G mask” (feathering mask), and if you print like this, the banding disappears a lot.

2. Meaning that Chinese manufacturers made G masks_UV Printer History and Future Prediction

When Ink Tech was selling JETRIX UV Printer

Since 2009, for two years, after an overseas sign exhibition, I would go through the trash cans with SW engineers to get the ones that were damaged or tested among OCE and SwissQ prints.

They use the same Konica Minolta Print head, but SwissQ UV Printer does not have printing banding, and although the heads are different, OCE UV Printer also does not have banding,,

You can’t see it in the finished prints, but the damaged prints stop in the middle of printing,

You can see the middle pass and the dot of the pass, and you can predict the logic of spraying ink through these dots, so when the exhibition ended, I went through the trash cans.

It was the G mask that SW engineers had worked hard to make for two years, and as the third company in the world to implement G mask, we expected a lot of sales.

However, in less than two years, Chinese products were also implemented, and the only difference between them and Chinese products was the SW technology, which became equal. In 2013.

The implementation of G mask meant that Chinese UV printers were no longer much different from Korean, American, European, and Japanese products.

After seeing the 2013 exhibition,

I thought that if one manufacturer implements it, sooner or later all Chinese manufacturers will implement G mask, and it will soon reappear in overseas markets.

IV. Chinese UV printers reappear at international exhibitions (since 2015)_UV Printer History and Future Prediction

1. A company with experience in advancing _UV Printer History and Future Prediction

In 2015, companies that had previously introduced UV printers to overseas markets but had failed exhibited UV printers.

This does not mean that the company was struggling, but rather that it was growing for the following reasons:
* Supplying UV printers to large companies as OEMs
* Maintaining high sales in the Chinese domestic market, which is quite large
* Maintaining high sales mainly in China, South America, and Eastern Europe, where solvent printers other than UV printers are still alive.

When I talked to the Chinese representative at the exhibition,
“I had good meetings in several places, but it was not easy to find dealers because of rumors that they were supplying to other places as OEMs.”

However, after two years, dealers were set up in several countries.

2. A company I’ve heard of for the first time _ UV Printer History and Future Prediction

In 2015, it was mainly big companies, but in 2017, FESPA featured companies I had never heard of before, as well as several Chinese companies.
Also, there were companies that had European CS offices and moved around, and there were companies that hired European CS staff from within the continent.
When I talked to Chinese salespeople before, they had little knowledge of UV printers and were not good at English,
But when I talked to them at the exhibition, they had accumulated experience and knowledge of selling UV printers in China, and they were also good at speaking the language.

Just as the quality of UV printers had improved, the mindset and qualifications of salespeople had also improved a lot.

For example, there was a company called China Handtop. Whenever they exhibited, they were in the booth next to mine, so I became close with the salesperson in charge.

When we first met, there weren’t many people in the exhibition booth, and it was shabby, but when we talked exactly 3 years later, they said that they sold 290 printers this year, and that was in 2016.

They started with 10 people, but now they have about 100 employees, and as production increased, they were worried about how to manage QC.

This is how the new company grew.

So far, we have looked at the flow of Chinese manufacturers,

Next time, we will look at how Chinese manufacturers developed and produced UV printers in a short period of time.

If you want to see the content in advance, please refer to the YouTube below.

UV Printer History and Future Prediction