Can Roland roll in Wide format UV?
Roland DGA is the leader in wide format digital printer-cutters, a fact the company reinforced and built on yesterday with the introduction of the new 54-inch wide VersaUV LEC-540.
This is not the first wide format UV-curable inkjet printer from Roland, but at 54-inches, compared to the 30-inch wide LEC 300 & 330, it is the widest and fastest and should have much greater appeal to those in the signage and graphics markets where Roland has a very strong brand. Roland should have a good opportunity in the low-end of the wide format UV-curable market, which is somewhat unsettled with the lack of any especially strong global competitors. The specifications on the new 54-inch wide printer look good, with 1440 x 1440 resolution, built-in front and back media tables and low power consumption, but one of the more interesting differentiators is the three ink configurations.
The VersaUV LEC-540 is a six-color printer that can be configured three ways, with a CMYK plus White plus Clear – which enables the application of a varnish. It can also be configured CMYK plus White plus White for high-opacity white printing on transparent films, and CMYK plus Clear plus Clear for special effects such as embossing. The configuration is not changeable because of the difficulty of cleaning or purging the white ink from the ink delivery system, so the buyer has to decide which configuration they want when they order the printer.
The Roland DGA VersaUV LEC-540
It is already challenging to compare wide format printers and printer-cutters on an even basis, but the inclusion of the built-in tables and bundled in Roland VersaWorks RIP into a $67,995 (MSRP) package creates a pretty compelling offer for the 85% of the sign market with less than a $1 million a year in revenue, which represents Roland DGA’s primary market. The LEC-540 also has the high image quality and substrate versatility to serve as a short-run package prototyping or label printer, which expands the addressable market for Roland DGA and for its traditional customers.
