NUR’s Expedio 3200 and the Tempo II UV

NUR is best known for its high-throughput production presses, but it offers everything from high-quality, entry-level, photorealistic inkjet printers to the monster presses. We're focusing on the Expedio 3200 and the Tempo II UV presses, both in the 10-ft. range. Both compete in the high-volume, high-throughput category for both roll and rigid outdoor materials.

Both the Expedio 3200 and the Tempo II UV are designed based on NUR's philosophy of handling the owner's various applications at a production level. The machines produce great images using environmentally friendly, UV-cure inks. All prints are destined for such out-of-home advertising applications as POP displays, billboards, banners, building wraps, vehicle graphics, transit posters, wall murals, backlit displays and much more.

Expedio 3200

The Expedio 3200, a high-volume, piezohead, drop-on-demand press, delivers an industrial-strength production capacity of up to 1,300 sq. ft./hr. (120 sq.m.). This roll-to-roll machine's integrated output collector ensures all jobs meet demanding turnaround times. The superwide-format, 720-apparent (360 addressable) dpi machine prints up to 10 ft. 6 in. wide on coated or uncoated PVC standard paper, blue back paper, SAV, mesh, banner material, truck-side tarpaulin, canvas, cotton and other materials (Fig. 1).

The eight-color machine uses four- or eight-color printing modes: cyan, magenta, yellow and black, or cyan, magenta, yellow, black, light cyan, light magenta, light yellow and light black. Changeover is easy between four- and eight-color printing modes.

The market demands outdoor versatility, and NUR delivers with its UV-curable ink system that provides up to two years of UV and water resistance without coating or lamination. Without solvent emissions, it addresses today's growing environmental concerns and regulations. Also, UV-curable inks provide more flexibility in output media.

The Expedio prints at high speeds on most rolled media – even standard, inexpensive, uncoated substrates or specialty substrates like textiles and designer papers. The end result is lower cost per copy on economical substrates, or even new business opportunities with the specialty-substrate markets.

The Expedio does require some floor planning prior to its arrival. It uses a three-phase 400 VAC, three-phase 208 VAC or one-phase 230 VAC, 12kW (peak), 50/60Hz and dry, oil-free 7 atm compressed air. It's a brute at 8,800 lbs. (4,000 kg) and 21 ft. 4 in. wide x 5 ft. deep x 5 ft. 5 in. high (6.50 x 1.53 x 1.65 m.). The ambient temperature should be between 63 to 83° F (18 to 28° C), relative humidity at 40 to 60%.

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The Wasatch SoftRIP software drives the Expedio. It includes flexible features, such as hot folders, tiling, rotating, cropping and spot-color replacement. All of the popular graphic-file formats, including PostScript and EPS, are accepted.

It also includes the NUR PrinTop II operating software, with versatile queue management, job-ticket-based operations, automatic color calibration, and such management tools as report generators.

By the time this article hits the street, some optional features, including the double-sided printing module, vertical cutters and multi-roll printing to maximize capacity, will be offered.

Tempo II

The NUR Tempo II prints directly onto various wide-format, rigid or flexible substrates. This machine also prints with environmentally friendly UV-cure inks.

Mounting or laminating isn't necessary, so you'll need less manual labor. The NUR Tempo II saves time, increases productivity, reduces operating cost and shortens turnaround time. It features versatility and ease of use with a simple changeover mechanism to switch between roll-fed and rigid-printing modes.

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The material list is endless — it just needs to fit on the flatbed size of 10.5 x 6.5 ft. (3.2 x 2m.). The flatbed inkjet press accepts the widest range of rigid and roll-fed substrates, including vinyls, corrugated boards, foam-core boards, fluted polypropylene, styrenes, polycarbonates, glass, wood, aluminum and much more. Image quality is great (Fig. 2).

To print on non-white substrates, the Tempo handles white ink. Without the white-ink capability, you could get unacceptable results on clear and colored substrates. Using a white underprint, you get the expected color fidelity. The white ink can also be used as an overprint to cover non-white areas or as a spot color to reproduce a white element in your graphic.

The Tempo II's general specifications are 720 dpi apparent (360 addressable) using 16 piezo, drop-on-demand heads. The media handling is both rigid and roll-to-roll (Fig. 3) with sizes up to 10.5 ft. x 6.5 ft. (3.2 x 2m.) and 2 in. thick for rigid, and up to 87 in. (2.2m.) wide for roll format. The printing modes are four, six or eight colors with print speeds up to 1,300 sq. ft./hr. (120 sq. m./hr.) in four colors, and up to 550 sq. ft./hr. (52 sq. m./hr.) in eight colors. The colors use an automatic switchover. The six-color modes are only available with the white-ink option.

InKtelligence

NUR believes the customer shouldn't worry about ink levels and consumption. They want to eliminate guesswork from the tedious ordering function. They achieve this using the automatic InKtelligence system, which includes freestanding ink storage and a dispensing cabinet, and a full set of ink and flushing liquids. This cabinet is connected to the NUR macroprinter via a wireless, data-communications network. NUR uses this connection to monitor the shop's ink consumption, then bill you for ink consumed and automatically reorders the ink supply, so you never run out of ink.

Training

NUR also offers three-day, onsite, color-profiling and workflow training, after the printer is up and running. NUR's professionals will streamline the training based on your production environment, operating procedures and goals. They'll bring their knowledge of color fidelity and streamlined workflows.

The applications engineers will build custom ICC profiles for your printer, and capture its color-reproduction characteristics on substrates and print modes the customer uses the most. NUR will also teach you how to use the NUR ColorBook, a printable PDF file that comprises 21-color shade tables, which ensures a predictable, final output color. These items normally require significant time for the user to understand and perform.

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NUR has engineered the Expedio 3200 and Tempo II to fit well in the UV-cure-ink, environmentally friendly arena. These two industrial-strength models cover all applications in the outdoor and POP markets. NUR's attention to print speed, productivity and cost-effective operation is apparent without having given up the high-quality output the client expects.

Nur America Inc.
85 Oxford Dr.
Moonachie, NJ 07074-1020
(201) 708-2100
Fax: (201) 708-2111
www.nur.com

Contact: Andrew Marcelli, marketing manager

Company Profile: NUR Macroprinters, founded in 1991, is a worldwide supplier of wide-format, inkjet-printing systems for the out-of-home advertising market. The product line includes the NUR Fresco, NUR Tempo, NUR Expedio and the NUR Spirit inks.