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Sepiax Ink Technology, water-based yet for outdoor
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| Nicholas invited as guest by Sun Chemical, at Sun FastJet factory in England. Here he is showing some samples printed in FastJet. |
In late March HP introduced its HP latex ink at a huge international event in Israel. Then at FESPA Digital another water-based ink was introduced by Sepiax. Sepiax Ink Technology had a large booth: but so did over 20 other after-market or alternative ink companies. Since I had to inspect all the UV flatbed printers and had meetings day and night, there was only time to visit those ink companies that I know already or those ink companies that stopped me in the aisle and asked me specifically to visit their executives. This is a polite way of saying that I had never seen Sepiax Ink at any ISA or SGIA trade show, and no one had ever mentioned Sepiax Ink Technolology to me, so I did not stop at their booth because there were a dozen other ink companies that also sought attention.
Since I have visited the Triangle ink company US headquarters in California and have been hosted for a week’s inspection of Bordeaux ink in Israel, and have been guest of Sun LLC ink in Novosibirsk, Russia, these are the three ink companies that I visited at FESPA Digital. Plus one Chinese ink company whose booth managers asked me to speak with their founder and CEO.
So after three days of meetings, photographing all the UV-curable printers, especially the new Mutoh Zephyr, there was no time to visit the booth of Sepiax. Nonetheless, if they exhibit at DRUPA, I hope to visit them. If not at DRUPA perhaps a visit to their labs will be possible the same way I visited NUR ink labs in Israel plus the many other ink companies I have visited in the last several months.
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| Nicholas at Sunflower (Sun LLC) ink factory in Russia. Here they make the special UV ink that is curable with LED lamps. |
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| Nicholas visiting the Bordeaux ink factory in Israel |
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| Nicholas in NUR ink lab on one of his four visits to Israel high tech companies. |
Checking their web site, “weather resistant, abrasion resistant” this sounds like the HP latex ink. I have also heard of an earlier DuPont ink that had similar qualities (in addition to the unfortunate VinylJet ink (made by DuPont for Kodak VinylJet, but in part due to problems with Encad, this early non-solvent ink failed utterly).
As soon as it is possible to receive training at the Sepiax Ink Technology then I can compare it’s pros and cons with those of HP latex ink. One fact is that Sepiax ink is formulated for piezo printheads (naturally since virtually all current signage printers use Epson, Xaar, or Spectra printheads.
In distinction, the HP latex ink is not intended to be an after-market ink; the HP latex ink is for thermal printheads.
First VUTEK InkWare produced a bio-solvent ink. Then Mutoh built a printer that used this bio-ink. Then that flatbed printer was replaced by a different Mutoh flatbed based on the ValueJet platform.
The new HP latex ink and the new Sepiax ink will challenge Epson’s new eco-solvent printer, GS6000.
First posted April 7, 2008.
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Dilli NeoPlus |
| HP Scitex XP5100 and HP Scitex XP5300 |
| HP Scitex XP2100 and HP Scitex XP2700 |
| HP Scitex FB6100 |
| L&P Spuhl RS |
| Sun FastJet |
| RIP Software |
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| Caldera RIP software |
Interesting inks & Alternative Inks |
HP latex ink |
UV-Curable ink, OEM (in preparation) |
UV-Curable, third-party ink |
| Encres Dubuit (others in preparation) |
Fine Art Photography Giclee & Proofing (on other FLAAR sites)
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Epson 4880 |
Epson 7880 |
Epson 9880 |
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Most of our updates for 2008 onward are in FLAAR Reports in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. It is more efficient for us to make new information available in PDF format. So if the web page itself is not updated, check out www.wide-format-printers.NET to see if the printer, RIP, or other subject is covered in an update in a PDF download.
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