First European and North American installations will drive high-volume production at speeds 3 to 5 times faster than scanning superwide-format printers

BERLIN -- With a first successful installation completed and a second to come soon, the new EFI™ Nozomi 18000+ LED single-pass printer for point of sale and display graphics producers from Electronics For Imaging, Inc. stands to redefine productivity and new opportunity in signage production. The 71-inch (1.8-meter) wide printer, running three to five times faster than all other scanning head printers, is the first single-pass, ultra-high-speed digital printer designed and built for the sign and display graphics market.

Today, during the FESPA Global Print Expo at Berlin Messe, EFI announced that the printer is now commercially available worldwide, with two sales already completed. The sales include a Nozomi 18000+ LED single-pass printer currently installed and running in North America, and a second printer to be installed in Q3 at a customer location in Europe.

Leveraging the capabilities of the market-leading EFI Nozomi C18000 Plus printer for direct-to-board corrugated packaging production, the Nozomi 18000+ LED printer delivers high-end output on a wide range of media in quantities other digital solutions cannot match. For businesses with high-volume demand, it represents an important opportunity to grow profitability, capitalizing on the printer’s ability to deliver the lowest cost per square foot and a lower overall total cost of ownership.

Driven by a high-performance EFI FieryÒ blade server digital front end offering next-generation color profiling technology, the printer is capable of printing on synthetic media and paper-based materials at speeds up to 1,000 sheets or boards per hour. Its unparalleled throughput helps users drive profitability in a wide range of high-volume signage applications.

A winning combination of quality and speed

First announced last year, the EFI Nozomi 18000+ LED single-pass printer made an exciting early impression in the industry winning the 2021 PRINTING United Alliance Pinnacle Product Award in the single-pass printer category. The printer takes many of the innovations developed for the EFI Nozomi C18000+ LED printer – the most-awarded and market-share-leading single-pass inkjet offering for the corrugated packaging space – and combines them with important enhancements that allow for premium-quality display graphics printing, such as:

• Manual or full automation feeding and stacking;
• Hybrid aqueous/UV primer for printing on adhesion-challenged materials;
• Optional pre-white for reflective and colored surfaces;
• Optional post UV coater for weatherability and UV protection.

Capabilities including pallet-to-pallet material automation, automatic registration, and automatic nozzle plate cleaning enable users to handle burst capacity for print runs from one to several thousand or more, offering new opportunities and better capacity for display graphics print providers.

“The demand for versioning and variable jobs continues to build,” said Todd Zimmerman, vice president and general manager of Display Graphics, EFI Inkjet. “It’s more important than ever that our ultra-high-volume customers keep up with faster turnaround times and ever-increasing capacity requirements. The EFI Nozomi 18000+ LED not only meets productivity needs of a world that’s moving faster than ever, it also represents the future of digital printing for the sign and display graphics market.

“With turbo-charged throughput and unmatched versatility, our signage and graphics customers can stay ahead of their competition and increase their capacity to meet market demands that will experience accelerated growth in coming years.”

Better quality at a lower TCO

This breakthrough printer gives customers an exceptionally broad application range for display graphics production, with extreme efficiency. Users can reduce their cost-per-square foot by eliminating the make-ready costs associated with analogue printing. The EFI Nozomi 18000+ LED also gives digital print display graphics providers that operate many different printers the ability to consolidate production onto a single super-high-speed platform. Not only can this shrink overall space and labor needs, the printer’s ability to reduce production waste brings a bigger environmental advantage to digital display graphics printing.

Speed doesn’t compromise quality with the Nozomi 18000+ LED printer. An on-board quality inspection system checks for color uniformity, as well as for nozzle out and other defects, to further ensure optimum print quality. The printer delivers a wide color gamut with up to seven colors with CMYK plus optional white, orange and violet inks. EFI has custom formulated and exhaustively tested Genuine EFI Nozomi 18000+ LED Series inks for the printer, and both the printing system and inks were developed in unison to assure users get exceptional quality, durability, reliability and consistency – with predictable running costs. Additional, best-in-class Fiery DFE and workflow features for the printer, including high-end color management, fast HyperRIP performance, Adobe PDF Print Engine support, streamlined variable data management, Smart Ink Estimator software, and Fiery Edge™ advanced color profiling, ensure that users experience the premium accuracy and performance they have come to expect from EFI.

For more information about super high speed inkjet printers and other advanced display graphics solutions from EFI, visit www.efi.com.