UV Printer History and Future 5 ARTJET UV Printer

II. Chinese Manufacturer Product Strategy _UV Printer History and Future 

1. Textile Printer _ UV Printer History and Future 

In 2016, when I was working at InkTec, I had an OEM discussion with Roland for a UV printer.

A Roland OEM representative suggested a meeting at ITMA, a Chinese textile exhibition, so I went there.

I had only seen solvent printer and UV printer exhibitions, and this was my first time at a textile exhibition.

There were more companies that showcased textile printers than I thought, and all of the companies that showed up at the exhibition were companies I had never heard of before.

At that time, I thought that UV printer manufacturers were the mainstay of inkjet, so seeing all those textile printer manufacturers made me realize that UV printer field was narrow.
One more surprising thing was that, unlike UV printer manufacturers, all of those companies were very large in scale.

UV Printer History and Future Prediction 

Among them, I saw Chinese players. A company called ATEXCO had a large booth with many people, and the design and performance of the equipment itself were so good that I didn’t think it was made in China.

UV Printer History and Future Prediction

2. Label & Package Printer_UV Printer History and Future 

When I was working at InkTec Co., Ltd., I was in charge of the Label Printer new business division and focused on everything from business feasibility review to product concept and sales for 2-3 years. Naturally, I went to overseas exhibitions, and if I quote the report from that time,

May 2017 China Print Exhibition

1) Chinese JHF company is growing rapidly in the sign industry, and it is expected that they are considering producing label printers in the future through their participation in this label exhibition.
2) Flexo, a company that makes printing equipment, was selling digital label printers. It is also expected that traditional Chinese printing equipment manufacturers will develop and produce inkjet label printers in the future.
3) Chinese Amica (the first company in China to provide board SW. JimChang) also exhibited a single pass label printer engine. Since inkjet boards and software are available, it is expected that Chinese flexo companies will go digital, or UV printer manufacturers will enter the label and package sectors.

September 2017 Brussels Label Expo

Quoting a conversation with a sales director of a large Chinese printer manufacturer,

“The sign market is very competitive and there is no margin, so I came to see what to do. I kept looking around, and there were a lot of Chinese manufacturers! They are all the same. What should we do now? They are worried. We are going to try making labels too.”

At the time, I was making label printers, so I said the following to the Chinese sales director (we worked together as partners briefly in 2004, so we talk about various things).

“When I tried single pass, it wasn’t easy. I think there is a difference in the difficulty between scanning printers and single pass printers. Mechanical precision is also very important.”

The Chinese friend said,

“What’s difficult? If you put an inkjet engine on an existing flexo company, it will be finished in about a year,

In 2017, China was also interested in label packaging and moving forward.

The difficulty of making the product complete is high, but since it started in 2017, it is expected that the completeness will gradually increase and the day will come when it will be sold on the market.

The second movement is a company that has set a product strategy targeting the label and package market.

3. High-speed UV Printer _ UV Printer History and Future

I can’t help but mention SwissQ Swiss UV Printer.
It is the only printer that implements the best quality through the KM1024 head 2-row arrangement among UV flatbed printers.
Chinese manufacturers were also trying 2-row, 3-row, and even 5-row arrangements for Flora.

Since Konica heads don’t work, they are trying Kyocera heads that have twice the number of nozzles and length of Konica heads, and also Kyocera head 2-row arrangement.
However, it is not easy to implement the print quality of 1-row arrangement through 2-row arrangement, and I know that many manufacturers are struggling because of this.

At InkTec, where I worked before, I thought the KM1024 2-row arrangement would be easy, so our engineer debugged for 4 years, and eventually they were able to change the head and the entire model and improve the quality to some extent.

Since they manufactured UV printers, the easiest and fastest approach was to release equipment that increased productivity, so all Chinese UV printer manufacturers promoted product upgrades like this.

Another product strategy is to create highly productive equipment in the existing UV Printer market.

Textiles

Companies that have set their product strategy on textiles have seen tremendous growth.

According to Nicky, a supplier of ARTJET UV Printers, they have grown four times since 5 years ago, and the biggest factor is Textile Printers.

Label Packaging

With technology that has been around for over 100 years, the standards for quality and speed for users of equipment that produces final products are high.

Durst launched its first model in 2009, and since 2017, label printer sales have increased (Durst itself is almost at the top in terms of inkjet technology),
so even a company with good technology has created a model that can be sold in 8 years.

Chinese manufacturers started in 2017, and launched their first model 2-3 years later, but Chinese label printers have not been installed in Korea until 7 years later,

so companies that have set product strategies with label printers will have failed strategies until 2025.

3, 5-row UV printer

Every Chinese manufacturer is trying it, but it seems that few companies have improved the level of completion.

This is also being made by all competitors, so the margin is still not good, so most major manufacturers are not focusing on it.

UV printers equipped with Epson heads

Until now, only small models have been equipped with Epson heads, and large models equipped with Epson heads have not been released yet.

Epson print heads are actively used only in small models.

2. Conclusion _UV Printer History and Future 

In the end, the UV printer model will change slightly in the future, but it doesn’t seem like a groundbreaking new model will come out.

If we apply the current situation to Korea,

• It is difficult to expect sales of large-size UV ​​printers because they are saturated,
• Although the medium-size 600 x 900 size is quite common, it is still in demand,
• I understand that startups are recently purchasing A3 and A4-size UV ​​printers. (I wonder if they can make a profit with that size and productivity,,,but I think they are good items for N-jobs.)

Since textile manufacturing has developed only in certain countries, it is questionable whether textile printer sales will be active in Korea, but it is expected that there will be a market for small-size customized textile printers.

It is questionable whether Chinese manufacturers can reach the level of British and Italian technology, and in Korea, the consumer quality level is high, so it is not easy to purchase Chinese label printers.