Optimum Colour saves time and money with Epson

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Johannesburg-based specialist printing company, Optimum Colour, is saving time and money with the Epson Stylus Pro GS6000 large-format printer it recently installed at its premises.

‘With our growing business, and the need to print a lot more on vinyl media, we were in search of a high quality solvent printer for a while,’ said Optimum Colour co-owner, Trudy Seymour.

Having been in the printing industry for close on 15 years now, Seymour was dead-set on the features that Optimum Colour refuses to compromise on, which made the search for a printer challenging.

‘Optimum Colour has been a big fan of Epson printers since we opened our doors in 1996,’ Seymour said. ‘But, to be fair, we set out to review as many brands of printers as possible, to ensure that we were not missing something new or exciting on the market.’

After rigorous testing, many of the printers that Optimum Colour tested just did not meet the running cost, media compatibility and print quality requirements. While not surprising to Seymour, the only printer brand that met all of her non-negotiable requirements was Epson – with its Stylus Pro GS6000.

According to Kelvin Reynolds, general manager, Epson SA, ‘the Epson Stylus Pro GS6000 is designed to be reliable, easy to use, easy to service and, above all, fast.’

‘With 1625mm wide roll-to-roll printing, the GS6000 is perfect for photographic reproduction or limited edition prints. The wide selection of media gives great flexibility – from printing trade show stands, to high quality signage or even fabric proofs and car vinyl cladding.

‘Utilising Epson Ultrachrome GS, the first Epson solvent 8-colour ink set, users get a colour range that is a lot wider than many other solvent printers. Prints are UV and water resistant and maintain superb image quality and high colour stability even when viewed over shorter distances,’ he says.

Seymour says that because of the high quality prints that the GS6000 is capable of producing, Optimum Colour has moved a lot of its smaller, more detailed jobs to the printer as well, saving time and money in the process.

‘Any printing company will tell you, maintenance time can play a big part in how efficiently your company operates,’ she said.

‘When you need to stop a machine daily or even hourly to clean the printer heads, you waste valuable time and money on wasted ink. This is where the real value of the Epson Stylus Pro GS6000 comes in.’

According to Seymour, because the GS6000’s printer head is of such a high quality, the company has managed to cut down to cleaning the printer’s head to just twice a week, which is saving up to five minutes per clean – or a total of approximately 200 minutes (3.3 hours) per week.

‘We recently did a job that amounted to 400 sq/m in one go, and we only had to do four head cleans. There was also zero banding and we did not need to re-profile the machines, which is just amazing – and much better than anything else we’ve tested over the years,’ she continued.

‘In short, less maintenance translates into additional capacity that we didn’t have before and – ultimately – the ability to do more jobs in a shorter space of time. And we’ve never needed to do more than a light clean on the heads, so our ink wastage is kept to a minimum.’

Reynolds says that these savings are all thanks to the static Micro Piezo print head technology that is used in even the most entry-level of Epson’s printers.

‘This technology,’ he says, ‘controls ink droplets that are much finer than a human hair – giving users exceptional reliability, high quality imaging and absolute control over the whole printing process.

‘Variable sized droplet technology means you get incredible detail at optimum speed and ink usage and, when combined with Epson’s Ultrachrome GS inks and digitally controlled heating elements, all you will ever be delivered is excellent, consistent results on a wide range of media, including vinyl.’

Speed is also a key requirement – especially in the fast-paced world of advertising, where deadlines are always changing and the ability to deliver on-time and on-brief is critical to your business’s success.

‘Our Epson printers have bailed us out of many tight deadlines, and the GS6000 is no different,’ Seymour added.

‘We can run an A1 print in an average of about five minutes, and on smaller jobs like corporate gift branding, stickers, car branding kits etc., where we can print text in as small as 6pt, it’s even faster, which is practically unheard of with most solvent printers.’

Seymour said that Optimum Colour is delighted with its purchase and is in the process of expanding its premises to accommodate an additional GS6000.

‘We’ve always been huge Epson fans and this latest exercise has just reinforced why Epson’s large-format printers are amongst the best on the market. With reduced running costs, and the capacity to handle more jobs with ease, the GS6000 is a real investment that is paying dividends,’ she concluded.

For more information, visit: www.epson.co.za.