In the Angel Awards 2009, which recognise the top ten of the most innovative introductions made during the year, EFI was successful with two of its wide-format related products.
The VUTEk GS5000r UV-curable superwide-format printer beat off stiff competition from the 5 m roll-fed sector to secure its Angel Award. This machine's versatility makes it suitable for high quality applications suitable for close viewing, as well as for its ability to output up to three rolls simultaneously for optimum productivity.Historically, the company's success in this market segment was secured with its original solvent-based machine able to handle materials at generous widths. This 5 m wide technology has now metamorphosed into a UV-curable option which brings with it the benefits of being able to print to a vast range of materials, including digital textiles, at speeds of up to 288 square m/hour. The VUTEk GS5000r incorporates a dual resolution capability of 600 dpi and 1000 dpi making it suitable for high definition applications as well as billboards, plus the choice of eight-colour inks or EFI's proprietary Fast-4 for the best speed and quality options.
Just making the Angel Awards deadline, EFI's innovative PrintSmith Sign was selected for its ability to help display producers and sign manufacturers manage their operations more easily and efficiently, simplifying MIS for the wide-format sector. Although PrintSmith is an established product, this new version is a complete sign shop management system designed to help users generate more profits, save time and reduce waste.
PrintSmith Sign is feature-rich, bringing users powerful estimating, account and production management, sales and estimating tools. It is the only offering of its kind to address wide format, digital page production, and screen printing operations in a single system and integrates with Fiery XF and Digital StoreFront, EFI's award-winning web-to-print platform.
Both these innovative products were introduced in 2009, along with additional printers in both the VUTEk and Rastek families. Each shows EFI's leadership skills and forward-thinking attitude in bringing wide-format digital solutions to market.
"The Angel Awards offer tremendous insight to the market in that they are given to products launched through the year which are most likely to impact positively on the wide-format sector," said Sophie Matthews-Paul, technical editor of Image Reports. "Innovation surrounds us but companies with pedigree and longevity tend to score because they have been involved with this arena for many years, sometimes since its inception. In the case of EFI, VUTEk printers pioneered the future of digital display production from the earliest days of airbrush machines through to the new technologies we see today."
